Where People Study to Become Winemakers
A lot of people consider winemaking a hobby which has its fair share of pleasant results. These people enjoy the making of wine and the fact that they serve it to their family and friends. Some of them even get the chance to brag a bit because the wine that they make comes with a pleasant taste to it. It is all usually a part time effort which most of these people during their spare time, at weekends or in the evenings. These people may have researched some basic and essential facts about the process, spoken with some other winemakers, purchased some literature or surfed the net. However their interests usually end here and once their wine has been made they take some time out to wait until the next year before they start once more.
For certain other people winemaking is a career and the dreams that they have, have led them into the process of winemaking. These people want to start their careers as winemakers and work for the wineries. They also want to grow grapes, tend to vineyards and nurture these grapes until they become big and healthy. Certain choices also have to be made and they have to ensure that they receive the right education so that they get the necessary degrees in studies such as Enology and Viniculture.
If you want to study winemaking in the United States, some of the best options are UC Davis and Fresno State which are all in the west. Both of these schools are excellent establishments and they have courses which cater to those who want to know about growing grapes in the warmer climates of the west. If you want to learn about winemaking in the east, you can usually opt to enroll in institutions such as Washington State and Cal Poly, both have programs which are new and still untested but over the years the quality of their programs should become clearly evident. Fresno State and UC Davis are in a constant undeclared battle for the educational market in winemaking. While the UC Davis department is more than a century old, Fresno has a younger department which started some time in the 1950’s.
At UC Davis some effort is going into the setting up of a vineyard. Due to the amount of incoming millions in terms of donations, the winery should be fully operational in the year 2008 and after this period their students will be able to get more hands on experience. From then on they will be able to get involved in different stages in the winemaking process, they will learn about fermentation areas, bottling rooms, a barrel room and an area for storing the bottles as they age. This will work by improving the chances that the students have of working in a winery based on their hands on experience.
Fresno’s faculty is doing rather well too. At least eighteen to twenty five thousand cases of wine are made annually and gobbled up by the market. They started their winery in the year 1997 and they were the first to have a winery as part of their program. Regardless of the school that you choose to graduate from you’ll have the opportunity to stick to your dreams and make the wine that you want to.
Darren Williger is a tea drinking, guitar playing, meditating, wine making sales maker who writes for WineSatori.com, HomemadeWine.com, and WineCreator.com.