If you’ve ever taken a drive through California’s picturesque vineyards and pastoral farms, you know it’s impossible to imagine the Golden State without them. But California wouldn’t have become a dream destination for foodies and oenophiles without research from the University of California.

The University of California, Davis, Department of Viticulture and Enology has received a $4 million endowment that will provide support in perpetuity for the kind of research and education that has made the department world renowned in its field.

The endowment, given anonymously, will fund unique projects that use and further develop analytical tools, advanced technologies and techniques, and equipment.

A new award fund has been created to help students interested in the wine industry pursue their degree in the Department of Viticulture and Enology at UC Davis.

The Theopolis Vineyards Diversity Fund will provide one scholarship of up to $10,000 each year to students interested in viticulture and enology and related research or managing a vineyard, with a preference for students who are underrepresented or understand barriers to entering the industry.

Warren Winiarski knows how to make beautiful wine and wants to help his beloved Napa Valley continue to do so for years to come. The legendary founder and former winemaker of Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars fame is funding an ambitious research project to update and expand the globally recognized Winkler Index and give the industry new tools to cope with climate change.

Beth Forrestel, an assistant professor and plant biologist in the Department of Viticulture and Enology, leads the project to modernize the Winkler Index that growers used for decades to match suitable wine grape varieties with different regions of the state. Even though smoke, wildfires and pandemic-induced restrictions presented some formidable obstacles to field research in 2020, the initial year of the study, Forrestel reports progress by those involved with the work.

Is cultivated meat — essentially, animal protein grown under lab conditions — a nourishing prospect to help feed the world, or is it more sizzle than steak? A consortium of researchers at the University of California, Davis, aims to explore the long-term sustainability of cultivated meat, supported by a new grant of up to $3.55 million from the National Science Foundation Growing Convergence program, in addition to previous support from the Good Food Institute and New Harvest.

Professor David Block, chair of the Department of Viticulture and Enology, has been elected a Fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE). The honor affirms the high esteem with which his colleagues and peers view his distinctive professional achievements and accomplishments.

For the first time since the 1980s, University of California, Davis, researchers have released new varieties of wine grapes. The five new varieties, three red and two white, are highly resistant to Pierce’s disease, which costs California grape growers more than $100 million a year. The new, traditionally bred varieties also produce high-quality fruit and wine.

University of California, Davis, scientists will lead a collaborative effort to study grapevine red blotch disease, which threatens the $162 billion U.S. grape industry. The virus causes red veins and blotches on grape leaves. The fruit on diseased plants is smaller, ripens more slowly, and its sugars and colors are muted.

Here's a discovery well worth toasting: A research team led by Professor Brandon Gaut with the University of California, Irvine and Professor Dario Cantu with the University of California, Davis has deciphered the genome of the Chardonnay grape. By doing so, they have uncovered something fascinating: grapes inherit different numbers of genes from their mothers and fathers. Their paper has just been published in Nature Plants.