With a new undergrad major in enology and viticulture, Cornell aims to sow a crop of talent to fuel New York's wine revolution

By Beth Saulnier

Lindsay Stevens '05 stands behind the bar at King Ferry Winery, pouring tastes of Chardonnay for an eager audience of oenophiles. But instead of a bottle, Stevens is tilting a plastic pitcher; not only is this 2007 vintage not yet for sale, it hasn't even seen a cork. "It was just filtered," she tells the tasters, "so some of its characteristics might still be dampened." Stevens should know; she's the winemaker who created it. And the dozen people swirling the crisp young libation in their glasses aren't your average Finger Lakes tourists visiting the winery, located on the east side of Cayuga Lake about forty-five minutes northwest of Ithaca. They're students and faculty in the Cornell University Viticulture and Enology Experience (CUVEE), a week-long adult-education course held on campus in July. The class wasn't for dilettantes. For the $2,195 tuition—not including accommodations— the course offered an immersion in myriad aspects of the wine industry, from climatology and grape husbandry to pest control, chemistry, blending, and marketing. The students got behind-the-scenes tours of several area wineries, where they had the chance to grill pros like Stevens on everything from the percentage of new oak in their barrel inventory to the hazards of working next door to the cold-stabilization room through an Upstate winter. "It's not bad," says Stevens, who keeps a space heater in her office, "except my toes are cold a lot."

Held for the first time last summer, CUVEE is only one facet of Cornell's burgeoning wine scene. Just as the popularity of the grape has expanded nationwide—as retiring Baby Boomers have the time and disposable income to indulge in fine wines, and outlets like the Food Network have raised awareness of fine dining among average Americans—the New York wine industry is rapidly expanding. Over the past three decades, the number of wineries has grown from the single digits to more than 200, in eight regions from Long Island to the Finger Lakes to the Niagara Escarpment. New York is now third among wine-producing states; the industry is estimated to employ 36,000 people and contribute as much as $6 billion a year to the state's economy, not only through grape cultivation and wine production but tourism (upwards of 4 million annual visitors) and related industries. With such high stakes, the state's wine industry is hungry—or, more to the point, thirsty—for assistance and expertise from its land-grant university.

Winemaking maven: Enology lecturer Kathy Arnink

Cornell has long contributed to the state's viti-culture (grape-growing) efforts, exploring methods for maximizing fruit production and coping with the vicissitudes of weather. The University is currently expanding its viticulture facilities with the construction of a new grape laboratory in the western New York town of Portland, set to open in 2009; on the enology (wine-making) side of the equation, plans are in the works for a 2,400-square-foot teaching winery on the Ithaca campus. Comparable to a facility at the University-affiliated New York State Agricultural Experiment Station in Geneva, the winery will initially be located in an addition to the Cornell Orchard's cidery; it will move to Stocking Hall once the building undergoes a major renovation in the next five to ten years. "We've been making wine in the food science department, but it's difficult," says enology lecturer Kathy Arnink. "The juice was pressed in the orchard, then brought to food science. It will be a lot easier when it's happening in one place. All of our winemaking and lab equipment will be here, so if we smell an unusual aroma as our wine ferments we can see if there is some microbe in there that we don't want, instead of thinking, 'Well, this is happening, but my microbe stuff is in the other end of the building.'"

For many New York State winemakers, the most exciting change on campus has to do with human capital. As of this fall, undergrads can formally major in enology and viticulture—making Cornell the only American university outside of California where students can earn a four-year degree in the field. (Past students, such as Stevens, had to settle for a concentration in viti-culture or enology while earning degrees in either plant science or food science.) "We were hearing all the time from the wine industry in New York State that they needed more educated people to help winery owners who may not have science backgrounds and need someone with more technical knowledge," Arnink says. "Now, we have so many wineries offering internships that, at this point, there are more internships than students."

As an interdisciplinary major, enology and viticulture (E&V for short, with "VINE" as its course code) does not have its own department but spans a wide variety of disciplines—not only plant science and food science but also climatology, geography, chemistry, microbiology, marketing, and more. Although majors can gear their studies toward either enology or viticulture, students will be expected to get a grounding in both. "The variety of weather conditions, grapes, soil types, and people in the New York State wine industry represents diversity you don't normally see in other regions," says Gavin Sacks, PhD '05, an enology professor and one of several recent hires for the new major. "There are more than forty varieties of wine grapes in the Finger Lakes alone. That means that if you learn how to grow grapes and make wine here, you are going to be well prepared for doing so almost anywhere else."

There are currently about twenty E&V majors, and Arnink says the program will stay small, perhaps growing to double that number. One of its goals, she says, is to graduate students who are highly trained in their field, but not so narrowly focused that they can't pursue something else after graduation. "This is their interest right now, but they're young, so they might change their minds," she says. "They'll have enough basic science, food science, and plant science that they can branch off. They'll be prepared for graduate school, or they could move up in a large food company if that becomes their interest." After all, as Sacks notes, not every undergrad who majors in psychology becomes a practicing psychologist; not every history major becomes a historian. "Part of the undergraduate degree is teaching people how to frame questions and answer them," he says. "I don't expect every student to become a winemaker or vineyard man. What I expect, though, is that they are going to know how to ask questions and answer them in an intimidating number of disciplines."

Vino school: Participants in the CUVEE program get lessons in canopy management (left) and wine blending (center). Right: CUVEE students take notes during a tasting in their Statler Hotel classroom. Below: Grapes under the summer sun at Swedish Hill, a Cayuga Lake winery run by David Peterson '79.

Crossing the Ag Quad, you can recognize E&V majors by their distinctive gear: black plastic carrying cases that house four oversized tasting glasses nestled in protective foam. ("You can swirl the wine around really well so the aromatics come out," Arnink says of the tall, wide-bottomed glasses, "and they're cupped, so the aromas stay inside.") Students taste wines about twice a week as part of their regular coursework; the state waves the legal drinking age for students consuming alcohol in for-credit courses within their major. E&V students are also encouraged to take the Hotel school's ever-popular Wines & Spirits course, long taught by Professor Steve Mutkoski '67, PhD '76, which delves more deeply into wine history, criticism, and connoisseurship. And once the Ithaca teaching winery is up and running, students will be making and tasting more of their own wines. The facility, Arnink says, will aid not only in hands-on training but in fostering morale among E&V majors. "It will give students a focus," she says. "We haven't had a place where they can hang out and form a cohesive group."

Two of those students spent their summer at Swedish Hill, a winery located across the lake from King Ferry, on Cayuga's west side. David Peterson '79 is general manager of the winery his parents founded in 1986; it now produces more than 60,000 cases a year. Peterson, whose family also owns Goose Watch winery on Cayuga Lake and Penguin Bay on Seneca, is on the front lines of the state's shortage of skilled enology labor. "We have a position open right now for an assistant winemaker for which none of the applicants has met the requirements—but students graduating out of the Cornell program most likely would," he says. "It's the same thing in the vineyard. There are people who know mechanically how to go about it, but don't know why they're doing what they're doing and aren't as good at adapting. If they're faced with a new situation, they don't know how to react." As Peterson sees it, the new major could have a significant impact on the industry in New York State. "I think there will be a whole new pool of trained people that, ten years from now, will change the face of what we are capable of doing in this region," he says. "They'll take us to the next level."

Vine to wine: Tosh Forrence '09 (above) and Steve Carlson '06 (below left) spent the summer interning at Swedish Hill Winery. Both E&V majors, Forrence plans to work on the viticulture side, while Carlson (who will complete his degree in December) is concentrating on enology.

On a brilliant July day, Peterson makes the five-minute drive from Swedish Hill to his family's fourth vineyard—the only one that doesn't have an on-site winery. There, intern Tosh Forrence '09 is driving a tractor down long rows of vines; a bale of mulch unspools behind him as he goes, the better to retain moisture in the soil and discourage weeds. The son of Virgil Forrence '75 and Hannah Hanford '79, Forrence is focusing on the viticulture side, hoping to start his own vineyard someday. He spent the past spring semester doing an abroad program in Florence, Italy, taking as many wine courses as he could; at Cornell, he and a few friends have formed an informal wine-appreciation group. "Four or five of us who are really close in the major, we like to sit around and be wine snobs," he says. "We try things and see what we think."

The twenty-one-year-old grew up on his family's northern New York apple farm, so he can pilot a tractor like other kids can drive the family minivan. (His full name is McIntosh; he has a brother named Jonathan and an uncle named Cortland.) At Swedish Hill he's been working to manage weeds and improve vigor—thinning shoots, grape clusters, and leaves to promote cluster and vine growth. "It's a challenge," he says of viticulture. "Every cultivar is different, every variety is different, so it always keeps you on your toes," he says. "Maybe there are insects in row ten and not in row eleven, or you come across a vine that's not healthy, and there is a challenge to figure out what's going on. Is there something in the soil? Is there a disease? Is it a pest problem?"

Back at the winery, twenty-five-year-old Steve Carlson '06 is interning on the enology side; his duties range from making sure that wines are cold-stable (meaning they won't crystallize when refrigerated) to "topping off" barrels, adding wine during the aging process to counteract evaporation. Carlson, a second-semester senior, originally intended to major in biology, but caught the wine bug after taking a food science course called Understanding Wine and Beer—a class that is always enrolled to its capacity of more than a hundred students, with many others turned away. "Wine is such a complex thing," Carlson says. "You can go as deep into it as you want to. As long as civilization has been around, wine has been around. It combines a lot of cool aspects. Sometimes you're outside, sometimes you're inside. You're doing both chemistry and manual labor. It's complex, but simple sometimes. There are so many variations and so many styles. It's intellectual, it's holistic. It's one of the few processes where you can see the whole thing—from a seed in the ground to the grape to the finished product."

Carlson's studies have included a fall internship harvesting grapes at Cayuga Lake's Sheldrake Point Vineyard and a faculty-led spring break trip to Chile, where he visited vineyards including the massive holdings of Concha y Toro. Although he could likely find employment in the Finger Lakes after graduation— there's that opening at Swedish Hill that Peterson has been hard-pressed to fill—Carlson wants to broaden his horizons by working or interning at other wineries in the U.S. and abroad. "A lot of people, I tell them I'm majoring in wine and they say, 'That's great, I'm into wine.' But once I start talking about it, they realize how boring I can make it, because I know so much about it. But I know so little about it too, because there are so many different wineries and so many different regions. To really understand it, you have to travel everywhere and know a little about everything. It can pretty much consume a lifetime."

Fruit of the Vine

Grape scientists nurture the new and protect the old

Since the late 1800s, Cornell viticulturists have developed and released dozens of new table, juice, and wine grape varieties geared toward New York's often-harsh climate; they have included such wine grapes as Cayuga White, Chardonel, Traminette, Noiret, Corot Noir, and Valvin Muscat. The University-affiliated New York State Agricultural Experiment Station in Geneva is home to researchers like Bruce Reisch '76, a professor of grape breeding and genetics who has twenty-five acres of vines under cultivation to develop new varieties, testing for everything from cluster formation to disease resistance. It's not a field for those in search of immediate gratification. "If I made a cross this year, we could release a new variety anywhere from fifteen to forty years from now," he says. "Every year, we have material in every stage of the pipeline. We're always making new crosses, evaluating potential new varieties that first fruited a few years before, making wine samples, choosing seedlings to send out to cooperating growers in other states."

Sun and soil: Viticulture professor Alan Lakso (left) tracks the growth of vines' root systems by inserting cameras into the ground (above). Top: A view through the camera, known as a minirhizotron.

He cites one potential new variety, which he describes as similar in style to a Gamay Beaujolais—"a light-style red wine grape, not a big, heavy red, but a very enjoyable, pleasant red wine variety." Reisch first created the cultivar in 1995, and the Ag station has been distributing test plants to cooperating vineyards and researchers for the past couple of years, something of a viticultural fast track. "We've made three wine samples already, and all three have been very good—and the vines have shown little damage from insects or diseases, even though they've never been sprayed with pesticides," he says. "But it requires further years of testing to make sure that what we're seeing is stable and long-lasting. After all, when we name and release a new variety, we're recommending it to growers to put into a vineyard that they hope to cultivate for thirty, forty, fifty years. We have to test these for multiple years, multiple vines, multiple locations to see how it does in different environments and over different years, looking for consistent quality."

Reisch's colleague Alan Lakso, a professor of pomology and viticulture, studies how the fruit's quality and quantity are affected by a variety of factors—physiological, environmental, and cultural. His research includes inserting cameras several feet into the ground via clear plastic tubes to record root development, with the data downloaded to laptops in the field. He's also been collaborating on the New York State Viticulture Site Evaluation Project; the effort, now in its testing phase, will create interactive online maps offering "one-stop shopping" for a wealth of data—soil composition, topography, rainfall, average temperature, and more. "When people want to find a place to grow grapes, they can zero in on locations and get a lot of information," he says. "It will help guide them in finding better sites or avoiding worse ones."

On the plant pathology side, scientists in Geneva and Ithaca are studying diseases and pests that bedevil vineyards—from powdery mildew to nematodes, the tiny worms that do $10 billion in agricultural damage each year in the U.S. alone. "We have a dynamic group, one of the largest groups working on grape pest management in the world," says Geneva-based plant pathologist Wayne Wilcox. "Because of the climate we have in New York—where it rains more than in California, Australia, Chile, South Africa, or the Mediterranean growing areas—we have a lot more fungal disease than in places that are dry in the summer. We study a whole panoply of diseases, and we try to develop total management programs for diseases as well as insects."

Grapes represent an interesting challenge for plant pathologists, notes senior research associate David Gadoury. Take the battle against powdery mildew, which devastated European vineyards in the mid-1800s after it was inadvertently imported on species native to North America. The European vinifera grapes had no resistance to such New World diseases, and they still don't—but growers and oenophiles continue to prize them, necessitating the liberal use of fungicides. "Viticulturists have created quite a bit of their own problems by insisting on growing a highly susceptible species in the center of origin for the pathogen," Gadoury says. "Grapes are grown because people have centuries of experience in making wine from these cultivars; they aren't selected based on their resistance to diseases. The challenge is to manage these diseases in a practical and a sustainable way, so our options are limited—because we're pretty much stuck with the varieties that we grow now."

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