Going Pro with Online Wine Science Education

When Higher Learning recently talked to students in the WSU professional certificate program in enology, we learned that they not only come from all over the country, they’re also making connections, starting businesses and getting jobs in wine regions all over the place. Hear what certificate program students have to say in this short video.

The two-year certificate programs in viticulture and enology are continuing education programs offered through Washington State University Extension. These non-credit, professional certificate programs are tailored for people who are seriously interested in working in the wine industry — grape growing and winemaking — but are not interested in obtaining a college degree.

Mapping Complexity in Washington Wine Country

As you read this, a graduate student in Prosser is sitting in front of his computer, for the umpteen millionth hour, bashing his head against the mapmaker’s perennial problem: the map can never be as detailed as the terrain it represents.

But that doesn’t mean the mapmaker doesn’t try. Especially when there is tremendous pent up demand from Washington grape growers for a vineyard site-selection tool.

Ian Yau is the mapmaker, and he’s a grad student based at WSU’s Irrigated Agriculture Research and Extension Center in Prosser. Yau is trying to wrestle a vast amount of information to the ground in order to turn raw data into useful knowledge.

“It’s a lot of spreadsheet manipulation,” Yau said, the wry understatement of his project causing a smile to play across his face.

Consider what you’d want to know if you wanted to plant a vineyard in Washington. You’d want to know, of a given plot of land, how many growing degree days it got at a certain elevation on a particular slope. You’d want to know about the soil beneath your feet: is it going to drain properly so the grape vines don’t wallow and rot? Is there hardpan or some sort of other restrictive layer close to the surface that will prevent the plants from sinking their roots deep into the soil? And what’s the soil’s water-holding capacity and pH?

The Mendoza Connection

When Daniela Romero heard Washington State University’s Markus Keller talking about irrigation during grape ripening, her curiosity was piqued. After all, applying water close to harvest time was simply not done.

Keller was teaching a grape physiology course at the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo in Mendoza, deep in the heart of Argentina’s wine country. Romero is a graduate student at the university, and she asked if she could join Keller’s research team in Prosser to learn more about his tradition-defying research.

“Keller’s research is important to the wine industry, because it will influence the way growers add water to their vineyards. In most of the world’s wine regions, irrigation during grape ripening is thought to dilute the sugars in grapes–but this belief does not have any scientific foundation,” Romero said.

As Keller pointed out, “The European wine industries and their many regulators have it all figured out: irrigation during grapes’ critical ripening period is generally a bad thing and must be strictly regulated.”

A quote from the International Organization for Biological and Integrated Control in their 1999 Guidelines for Integrated Production of Grapes illustrates Keller’s point: “Irrigation of vines for wine production will not be applied after véraison or highly restricted by the regional guidelines in order to guarantee the good quality of the wine.”

“The tacit assumption is that irrigation boosts berry size and dilutes the quality-impact components of the grapes,” Keller said. “So pervasive is this argument that, even in the New World, many wineries encourage growers to withhold irrigation water during fruit ripening to avoid any perceived adverse effects.”

Keller and former graduate student Marco Biondi put the assumptions to the test–with startling results that fly in the face of viticultural tradition.

The Fine Details: The Ability to Blend Art and Science Helps Make Great Wines

When sipping a glass of a fine winemaker’s red blend in front of the fire, it’s easy to appreciate the art that went into that glass.

But anyone who has tried to make wine finds him or herself quickly caught up in what amounts to a science project.

“Winemaking is certainly creative,” said Carolyn Ross, assistant professor of food science at Washington State University and an expert in the sensory analysis of wine. “But at its core, winemaking is a scientific endeavor. What folks often forget is that those two things are not incompatible.”

Take the fine art of fining, for example. Fining agents are substances added at or near the end of the winemaking process in order to improve clarity, adjust flavor, aroma and wine stability. In other words, fining tweaks a wine’s sensory qualities.

And the sensory quality of wine is, of course, what enjoying a glass of great wine is all about: the mouth feel, the unfolding bouquet, the color, the acids, tannins, and other qualities that wine writers deploy armies of adjectives trying to describe. Ross takes a scientific approach to those armies of adjectives be finding ways to quantify their chemical properties and by training panels of wine tasters to communicate the importance of individual sensory qualities.

“Fining is critical for consumer acceptance of white wines as a haze or sediment in the bottle may eventually lead to consumer rejection and economic loss to the winery. Together with racking and filtration, fining agents improve clarity, define aromas and increase shelf life,” Ross and her colleagues wrote in a recently published article in the American Journal of Enology and Viticulture.

But, the researchers add, fining may also “impact the sensory quality of wines,” though how much sensory impact fining has depends upon a complex relationship between the fining compound and the type of wine being fined.

“Fining is definitely where some basic scientific practice is essential to making a good wine,” said Ross.

Ross and her team fined Chardonnay and Gewürztraminer made by a well-known Washington winery which donated the wine to Ross’s team specifically for this series of experiments.

“There’s hasn’t been a lot of research done on the fining of Washington wines,” Ross pointed out. Because wine is so chemically complex, it is very “place specific”: grapes of the same variety grown in different areas produce wines with varying sensory qualities and so research, too, needs to be place specific.

A Pinch of This, a Dash of That

The Importance of Understanding Micronutrients in Grapes

By Brian Charles Clark
wine.wsu.edu

When humans don’t get enough zinc, we can get sick with cancer and suffer immune-system dysfunction. The same is true of plants. Micronutrients such as boron, zinc and copper, although only a tiny part of a plant’s diet, can have a profound effect on the plant’s health.

Washington State University soil scientist Joan Davenport and her colleagues at the WSU Irrigated Agriculture Research and Extension Center in Prosser are studying micronutrient utilization in Concord grapes. Washington is the nation’s number one Concord grape producer, so understanding what happens with micronutrients is important to the industry’s bottom line. And what Davenport learns about micronutrients in Concords is going to be applicable to wine grapes, too.

Micronutrient availability is an issue in Washington’s grape-growing region, with its high pH soils. The soil availability of micronutrients decreases as pH increases.

“Right now, growers apply micronutrients based on their experience and on what’s commercially available. We want to give them quantifiable data to work with,” said Davenport. “Then they’ll be able to supply plants with what they optimally utilize without spending more than they need to on inputs.”

If the vine doesn’t get enough boron, Davenport said, pollen lands on the flower but doesn’t germinate. “That’s a disaster,” she said, “because if there’s no pollination, there’s no seed, and then there’s no fruit.” Copper and zinc don’t affect the plants so dramatically, but do affect the size of the canopy.

Davenport’s current project is based on one that her doctoral student, Suphasuk “Bird” Pradubsuck, finished recently.

The Beautiful Mistake

Wine Spoiler May Be Good for Fuel Production

By Brian Charles Clark and Suzanne Stanard
wine.wsu.edu

Ever had a glass of wine that tasted the way a barnyard smells? The culprit likely was a yeast, Dekkera (Brettanomyces) bruxellensis, that plagues wine production worldwide. Thomas Henick-Kling is part of a multi-institutional team working to control the yeast and potentially reprogram it to add value in bioethanol production. Henick-Kling is director of WSU’s viticulture and enology program.

The team is headed up by North Carolina State University researcher Trevor Phister, assistant professor of food, bioprocessing and nutrition sciences.

Collaborators from five labs won a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Joint Genome Institute (JGI) to sequence the Dekkera genome. Along with Phister and Henick-Kling, the team is comprised of Scott Baker of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Linda Bisson of the University of California-Davis, and Fred Dietrich of Duke University.

“From a microbial spoilage standpoint in wine, this yeast is the big problem we have,” Phister said. “Because the yeast thrives in high-ethanol environments, it also is a contaminant in biofuel fermentations, causing a decrease in the amount of ethanol that those fermentations produce.”

Your Mother Doesn’t Work Here

The Northwest Grape Foundation Service and WSU are keeping Washington’s vineyards clean

By Brian C. Clark, Washington State University

The Northwest Grape Foundation Service is part of the National Clean Plant Network, a nationwide effort to supply agricultural producers with “clean,” virus-free plant material. Considerable scientific expertise and rigor is needed to thoroughly screen plant material for viruses and to propagate the clean material. The clean material is then released to certified commercial nurseries throughout the Pacific Northwest, where it is grown for sale to producers. Considering the prevalence of viruses and the expense of keeping them at bay, the National Clean Plant Network is not only a great investment, it is a necessary one.

Late in 2008, the organization Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) issued an analysis of the 2009 Agriculture Appropriations Bill, also known as the Farm Bill. The organization focuses on government waste of tax payers’ money, a laudable form of activism.

Vine Doctor

Leafroll isn’t as fun as it sounds

By Brian C. Clark

Seeking Answers for Grape Diseases

Gardeners may prize ornamental grapes that turn crimson in late summer, but that’s not something wine grape growers want to see in their vineyards. Crimson leaves are a characteristic symptom of a complex virus-associated disease called grapevine leafroll. The untreatable disease delays ripening, causes a significant drop off in yield and grape quality, and can shorten the life of the vine.

King of the Yeasts

By Brian Charles Clark
Washington State University
wine.wsu.edu

Where does a great glass of wine get its start? In the vineyard, certainly, as the foundation for good wine is always good fruit. But once the fruit is picked and turned over to the winemaker, yeast can make or break a great wine.

Once yeast is added to grape must (the juice and, if red, skins of the grapes), winemakers hope it performs as expected. Ideally, yeast should perform consistently batch after batch, regularly metabolizing a certain amount of sugar into ethanol. A yeast that underperforms may result in a sluggish or “stuck” fermentation—an expensive, stinky disaster for a commercial winery and a disheartening mess for a home winemaker.

Future Grape

By Brian Charles Clark, Washington State University

How many merlots can you make? At some point, speculates Amit Dhingra, consumers are going to want something different.

Dhingra is a horticultural genomicist at Washington State University. His research focuses on sequencing genomes and then taking that information to produce better fruit. He recently told me that “as tastes change, I think there will be more wines filling specific niches. People always want something new.”

Next Page »