Last Saturday was blending
day for the Allan Hancock winemaking class. The class has lasted 2 semesters
and has now stretched into the summer. Bottling day (probably bottling weekend)
is August 16th which will mark the end of the class, and most probably the end
of my academic career, wine-based or otherwise.
In August of 2007, having
secured a place to stay in Solvang, I signed up for three classes: Introduction
to Winemaking/Enology, Viticulture Operations and Basic Winemaking I. Although
the Intro was listed as a prerequisite to the other two there didn't seem to be
an hard and fast rule against taking all three at once, so off I went. The
intro class was being held in the AHC "Satellite campus" in Solvang (actually 4
rooms in an office park), so it would only be a 5 minute commute from where I
was staying, very welcome after driving up 2 hours from
Going into these classes I
had a good idea, of course, of how the winemaking process worked. You brought
in the grapes, crushed them (for reds) or pressed them (for whites). Shortly
thereafter they started fermenting and eventually, after the fermentation was
complete and all of the sugar in the juice had been transformed into alcohol,
you had wine, which then was transferred into barrels (usually), where it aged
for between 6 and 24 months, and then was bottled. But I did not know how these
steps were achieved, what kind of equipment you used, how you used it, what
decisions were made at each stage. What is the wine had low sugar? High sugar?
Low acid? High acid? Or what if the fermentation was stuck? What was malolactic
fermentation? What happened if things got screwed up? The winemaking class was
all about the students making wine. The intro class would give me some
theoretical backing. The viticulture class would let me get my hands dirty in a
real working vineyard, where I would supply the grapes used in my winemaking
class.
My initial assumptions about
my nascent real life wine education were accurate in spots and inaccurate in
others. I learned very quickly that the picturesque campus vineyard visible
from the highway was actually run by Kendall-Jackson, who controlled all the
grapes that were produced. AHC students were strictly forbidden from working
this vineyard, although there would "possibly" be a field trip later in the
term to have a look around. Whenever I questioned someone in the Agbus
(shorthand for Agri-business, the department's formal name) department about
the ownership and history of the vineyard no one seemed to know for sure, All
anyone knew was that Kendall-Jackson called the shots, which may or may not
have always been true. I believe at some point AHC had owned all or part of the
land/vineyard and that they may receive part of the revenues, but it all seems
mysterious.
Which left us with the
campus vineyard, a roughly 3½ acre parcel at the furthest edge of campus
abutting an unused parking lot, a vacant lot and a seemingly unused softball
field, all owned by the school. Certainly the vineyard was large and varied
enough to provide a bountiful crop and a rich learning experience but there was
one problem - the vineyard had been overrun by mildew and was in a state of
extreme neglect and disarray. The vines were scraggly and competed with a dense
and varied population of weeds, many of which were the same height as the
vines. Whatever grapes were hanging from these vines were sorry looking
specimens, and nothing you'd want to make wine from. The vines also had huge
suckers pushing up from the rootstock, some over 2 feet long (all the vines
were grafts onto different rootstocks).
It turns out that the Agbus
department had recently been in a state of flux and had just hired the new
department head after a long search. His name is Alfredo Koch and he is the
scion of a wealthy Argentinean wine empire. Although Alfredo was the owner of
the family estate in
Alfredo would teach the
viticulture class; he had conducted the Intro class the previous (spring 2007)
semester, but he had recruited Mike Larner, a fellow Davis PHD candidate, to
teach it this semester. Mike Larner is the name I had dropped regularly as my
future source of grapes, since his output was well-regarded and Larner Vineyard
was a widely known producer in the area. He had inherited a 33 acre vineyard
from his father, which he co-owned with his mother and sister; I believe he
lives there as well.
The teacher of the
winemaking class was Norm Yost, a well known winemaker with deep roots in the
area. Norm has his own wine label, Flying Goat, which specializes in high end
pinot noir and he also consults for some other wine operations in the area. He
had taught the class for a few years. When I started the class I had never
heard of him or Flying Goat actually so I my knowledge of Norm was limited to a
brief bio on the Flying Goat website, where I learned that the winery was named
after the dexterous airborne capability of pygmy goats, and that Norm made some
pricy pinots from a few different vineyards.
There was a marked contrast
between the three teachers - Norm Yost is an industry lifer who relied on
winemaking for his livelihood and was very clear eyed and practical about what
it took to make wine, and make it profitably. Alfredo Koch is also a lifer,
literally born into it, but Alfredo had never really had any serious economic
concerns, as he oversaw a vast operation that was already running smoothly by
the time he took over, giving him the luxury to commute between
The Intro class evolved much
as I thought it would: Mike Larner gave us a good grounding in basics of
winemaking and viticulture, complete with grapevine physiology, a quick look at
wine over the years (it's been made for over 5,000 years, etc) and due to his
affinity for chemistry, a sprinkling of some cryptic equations on the blackboard
that went right past me, as most of wine chemistry does. I enjoyed talking to
him after class, where I would quiz him over the logistics and economies of
grape growing and winemaking, which he was happy to answer, invariably
stressing that it can be a brutal business. In short, this class was similar to
one you could find in most every college that had any sort of an enology
program i.e. I possibly didn't have to travel 130 miles to take it.
The vineyard aspect of the
That left the winemaking
class, meeting every Saturday Monday from
We got off to an
inauspicious start. Previous classes had made wine at CCWS, a great place to
make wine both in terms of facilities as well as observing a great deal of activity by professional winemakers.
Unfortunately CCWS had decided to discontinue their association with the AHC
program, thus we didn't have a meeting area / classroom set up until very close
to the beginning of the term. Finally someone had come up with a facility near
the
The winemaking facility was
a new winery, whose clients were unknown to us. The classroom was actually an
empty room (possibly intended for storage or office cubicles) at the entrance
of the building, where we set up folding chairs and a whiteboard - Norm talked
a little about himself and then each student introduced themselves and
explained their motivation for taking the course.
What was striking to me was
that the median age of the students was around 50, the youngest being early
30's and ranging from mid-70's. Many people had land they wanted to plant, one
person already had vineyards and made his own wine. The students without land
wanted to get into the wine industry, whereas the landowning types seemed more
interested in planting some grapes and making their own wine.
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