Food and wine are more than just great flavors – they reflect the stories of communities and traditions. Darrell Corti, a Sacramento food and wine expert, has spent a lifetime sharing those stories, enriching California’s culinary landscape with his introduction of new tastes, ingredients and varietals.

To honor Corti’s contributions, Bob and Roger Trinchero, brothers from one of the largest family-owned wineries in the country and producers of Sutter Home wines, have established the $1.5 million "Darrell Corti Endowed Professorship in Food, Wine and Culture" at UC Davis.

This endowed professorship will promote research on the cultural significance of food and wine, provide experiential learning opportunities for students and foster interdisciplinary connections within the campus community.

“I am very pleased to make this gift to further the excellence of food, wine and culture at UC Davis,” said Roger Trinchero. “Our intent is for this role to advance scholarly work in the humanities and social sciences at UC Davis, including research, curriculum development and leadership, and public outreach that helps us understand the cultural aspects of food and wine in California, the U.S. and around the world.”

The professorship will rotate every five years between the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences and the College of Letters and Science. Professor Charlotte Biltekoff with the Departments of Food Science and Technology and American Studies will be the first to take on this role.

Biltekoff joined UC Davis as a post-doctoral researcher in 2005 and became a faculty member in 2007. Her expertise focuses on the social and cultural components of food and health. She recently published her second book entitled, “Real Food, Real Facts: Processed Food and the Politics of Knowledge,” which outlines the social issues behind worries about processed food and explores food industry efforts to build trust through science. 

She’s excited for this opportunity and is already creating momentum for what she hopes to accomplish in this new role. 

“UC Davis is a place to ask big questions, do great research and do great things for students around food, wine and culture,” Biltekoff said. “We recognize that those things are inseparable; we have to talk about the sciences, the culture, the politics all together. We cannot separate them. So, we’re going to develop the expertise, the undergraduate programming, the intellectual momentum and community that really encompasses all of that.”

Biltekoff values the contributions of the Trinchero family and Darrell Corti to the food and wine industry, noting that their names resonate with many Californians. She feels honored to explore the stories behind the flavors and products they have introduced to the region and beyond.

“I’m particularly interested in how Darrell Corti introduced foods that every day we take for granted,” she said. “Traditional balsamic vinegar, white zinfandel, and more – many foods and beverages are now part of our culture, cuisine and our culinary lexicon only because of actions that Darrell took.”

Developing a minor in food studies

One of Biltekoff’s goals is to develop a new undergraduate minor in food studies. This program will examine the cultural and historical contexts of food and beverages, helping students gain a broader understanding of how food is produced and consumed.

“The minor will be complementary to majors including food science, nutrition and all the different agricultural sciences, and it will also be complementary to humanities and social science majors; that’s what’s so exciting about it,” she said. “We can bring the social and cultural dimension to students who are getting a major in food science or nutrition and they can get a minor in food studies and really have a more well-rounded understanding of their chosen fields.”

To help create this new minor, Biltekoff plans to bring together faculty and researchers from across campus to better understand each person's expertise and build a community that showcases their diverse backgrounds. She hopes this collaboration can spark intellectual creativity and lead to developing best practices for cross-disciplinary work on food.

Vision for the future

Biltekoff is excited to be part of a team of faculty planning a two-day event scheduled for Dec. 6-7 at the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science Sensory Theater. This event is part of “Thinking Food @ The Intersections,” a year-long series on food and justice funded mostly by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and its Sawyer Seminars. The new Corti Endowed Professorship will also help support this series, which will explore the roots of food inequality in the U.S. through quarterly gatherings that blend research, activism, art, food and wine, to inspire new conversations around social justice and food systems.

“What we want to do is something that brings together scholarship, community engagement, and multi-sensory experiences with food, wine, art and music to really get at these questions about social justice and food,” Biltekoff said. “And as Corti professor, I’m helping to fund that project because I really believe in what we’re doing – we’re engaging community partners, engaging the senses, bringing scholarship to life in new ways, and getting people experientially and intellectually into these questions about food and justice.”