Allan Hancock College’s wine program is expanding to become one of the most comprehensive in Southern California, with only CSU Fresno rivaling it for the title. The trick to Hancock’s burgeoning program is to create a hands-on experience that takes students through everything it takes to be successful winemakers—from grapevine to store shelf.
Its expanded program will be offering new classes in the spring, such as wine business, advanced wine evaluation, and mechanized agriculture. The Agribusiness/Viticulture and Enology Department welcomed guests to tour its new facilities—and enjoy a little wine and food—on Nov. 14.
The Santa Maria campus’s new $17.6 million Industrial Technology Complex includes a 1,500 square-foot winery and 2,800 square feet of outdoor work space to house the program’s new state-of-the-art winemaking equipment, including a new grape destemmer, presses, corker, stainless steel tanks, oak barrels, and forklifts.
Alfredo Koch, who heads up the program, said the reason for the expansion is simple: In an area rich with wineries and grapes, there’s a demand for it.
“The program is increasing in students. In the last seven years, it’s doubled,” he said.
Another thing that will be new for the spring is that students who are at least 18 years old, but aren’t 21 yet, will be able to actually taste the wine. The “sip-and-spit” bill was signed by Gov. Jerry Brown this summer, and will allow underage students enrolled in accredited viticulture or beer brewing courses to taste, but not swallow, the alcoholic liquid they are studying.
Koch said it’s a law states such as Washington and New York already have. And, he added, it will give students the opportunity to actually taste and profile what they talk about in classes.
Couple the new parts of the program with the 4-acre vineyard behind the college’s baseball fields, and the college has everything it needs to make and sell its own wine. Koch said soon the college will be able to do just that. The college recently applied for bonded winery permits that are expected to be approved within the next month or so.
“This has all the elements that a commercial winery has,” Koch said. “The students will have the attitude to produce a wine that needs to be sold.”
It’s a concept that’s been in progress for almost 10 years now, according to Koch, and has developed into a somewhat unique wine program that can physically take students through every step in the commercial winemaking process.
Pouring at the event was Clos Pepe Estate Vineyard Manager and Winemaker Wes Hagen. He’s been in the industry for years and sometimes teaches classes and lectures for the program. Hagen said Hancock’s wine program is invaluable to the area, calling it a “game-changer for Santa Barbara County.”
“There’s only a few places in California that can teach students the actual task of winemaking,” he said, adding that when he gets interns from UC Davis (for example), they generally don’t know how to do the physical tasks associated with winemaking. “Conceptually, they’re extremely well educated. When it comes to the physical part … they suck.”
He said in the past, most of Hancock’s learning was done in a classroom, where students conceptualized and talked about the different aspects of wine, but he said a classroom is not a great place to learn to make wine. Things will definitely be different in the future.
“The crazy thing is once that wine’s in a bottle, the wine marketing class can actually take it and sell it,” Hagen said.
School Scene was written by Managing Editor Camillia Lanham. Information should be sent to the Sun via fax, email, or mail.
This article appears in Nov 20-27, 2014.