ASU cultivates wine-teaching grant

By Frank Ruggiero

ruggiero@wataugademocrat.com

Grant Holder, professor of chemistry at Appalachian State University, is uncorking yet another grant for the university’s enology and viticulture program, this one in the vintage of $65,000 from the U.S. Department of Education.

Typically, such grants are limited to $50,000.

Holder and visiting professor Dr. Lucian Georgescu received the grant in October, and Holder said it will provide an opportunity for ASU to work with universities in Italy, France and Portugal for an international degree program in enology and viticulture.

The European Union-United States Atlantis program, made the degree program possible, which, according to the Department of Education Web site, is “a grant competition conducted cooperatively by the U.S. Department of Education’s Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) and the European Commission’s Directorate General for Education and Culture (DG EAC),” the purpose of which “is to promote a student-centered, transatlantic dimension to higher education and training in a wide range of academic and professional disciplines.”

Holder said Appalachian has participated in the program before through the Walker College of Business. 

This particular venture will team Appalachian with the University of Udine in northeast Italy, which Holder called one of the lead institutions in Europe on enology, the University of Bordeaux in France, and the Technical University of Lisbon in Portugal.

“So, that’s a good combination – Boone and Bordeaux,” Holder said. “The grant will help us develop with them a common curriculum, which is a very bold idea, I think.”

The curriculum, he explained, will be based on principles of agricultural value addition, such as taking $1 worth of grapes and turning it into $10 worth of wine.

“To do this, we’ll be using enology, viticulture and national products, as all of those take base materials and transform them to products worth more than they are raw,” Holder said.

Once bureaucratic matters are sorted out, students of enology and viticulture will be able to enroll in the program, completing the first one to two years at Appalachian and finishing the third and fourth in Europe. The concentration would remain the same, but the locale would not, Holder clarified. Upon completion of the study abroad, the student would return to Appalachian to complete a thesis, participate in an internship and graduate.

“We want to make this just as painless as possible, and I believe it will enhance the marketability of our graduates,” Holder said, adding students would also take business courses to round out their education and further enhance their marketability. “Business will be a big component – tourism, marketing, and all the things you have to worry about after the bottles are made.”

Though the program is set to officially launch in 2008, Holder said students can begin the basic course work as early as fall 2007. “We can start designing individual curriculum for students – individually designed concentrations through the chemistry department,” he said, adding the program’s official structure should be completed in the next five weeks or so.

It will take time to develop an enology and viticulture infrastructure at ASU, such as a student winery, but once all is underway, Holder sees a focus on sparkling wine as to not compete with colleagues in the eastern part of the state.

Such a product would cater to the High Country’s tourism market and benefit the local economy. “People who grow these grapes will want something they can do with their grapes, and they’ll be able to transform this into sparkling wine, which we’ll be able to give back to the people – bed and breakfasts, restaurants, et cetera,” Holder said. “In the meantime, there’s a lot of student interest and no need to delay.”

Earlier this year, the wine program received nearly $300,000 from the Golden LEAF Foundation to fund the creation and operation of a mobile wine laboratory, which will allow university faculty to conduct analyses in the field for grape growers and winemakers.

Holder said the vehicle has already been purchased and modified equipment is arriving daily. Candidates for the lab’s operator, known as a wine and grape quality field analyst, have also been interviewed.