Best of Cork Talk: Understanding Vineyard Enology

Um, I'll be rounding out, I guess it'll be nine years in January, moving into my 10th year at the college.

Wow, that's pretty awesome.

So what was the program like when you got there, and then what changes have been made since?

Well, the, the program when I first arrived was, uh, in a, in a good state, in a pretty good state.

Um, I would say, you know, that we had a lot of growing that we could do.

There was a lot of opportunity, uh, just because the new Shelton Badgett Center had just opened up Uh, so I mean, you have this big, beautiful, uh, s- North Carolina Center for Viticulture and Enology and all this really wonderful equipment, and so the opportunities really were endless.

Um, we started out, I started out, and, you know, of course, we started bringing in fruit, and it was a very high energy first season, and as we kind of moved forward, you know, we started getting into all sorts of different things.

I mean, we, we started, um, a sparkling program, uh, in 2013, and we were the only college in, uh, on the East Coast to have a traditional method sparkling program that actually teaches students how to do that.

And I did that because I thought that North Carolina was the perfect place to make sparkling wine.

And I didn't understand why nobody was making sparkling wines.

Now, you know, of course, there are a couple of people, Bill Moore and Childress, that really do the traditional method.

But I thought to myself, "This is a skill that n- that future winemakers definitely need to have." And so it was interesting.

Um, I actually got all the funding for that program through the 50th anniversary of the college and through the foundation.

So the college was hosting a 50th anniversary, um, year, and they were, uh, doing all sorts of different events, uh, related to the 50th anniversary.

And, uh, it was, uh, basically Marian Venable, who's still at the college there, she works with the foundation, and I said, you know, to her...

Well, it was really her.

She said to me, she said, "If there's anything you ever need, let me know." And I said, "Well, of course, there's always things that, you know, you need."

[laughs]

[laughs] And so I said to her, uh, "Well, I'd love to do a 50th anniversary sparkling, but I don't- I know we don't have any funding in the program to do that and to purchase that equipment because it's gonna be a pretty, uh, it's gonna be a pretty large expense to purchase that equipment." And so she said, "Well, all right.

Well, we'll do that.

Uh, we'll get you that equipment." And I said, "Well, in return, um, let me make a 50th anniversary sparkling for the college to give away to the donors, to the board of trustees." Um, and so we did that, and, uh, we have still have some of that original vintage in our, uh, little wine library that we have down in, uh, one in our building.

So we have a small wine library of wines that, um, I started to keep, uh, wines from every single vintage so that students, if they ever come back or, um, if the current students ever wanna taste, uh, previous vintages, we can go down there and do that.

So the sparkling wine program, uh, was really, really, really, uh, awesome.

I think, uh, for the college and just in general, we've done so well with our sparkling wines.

We've won best sparkling in the state, and we've been rated by James Suckling for our sparkling.