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Trellis Alliance

Trellis Alliance President's Message: Kay Bogart

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President’s message:

This message is directed to all of you who have a passion for wine, winemaking and winegrape growing:

The Trellis Alliance is made up of a diverse group of members who represent all aspects of the wine, grape and affiliated industries in California, the United States and internationally. We share a desire to develop a better, more thorough understanding of the critical issues facing our industry in today’s market. Realizing that the wine industry, worldwide, is highly dynamic and that it’s vital that our members are able to keep up with the constant influx of new ideas and technologies, The Trellis Alliance’s mission is to facilitate communication between the U.C. Davis Department of Viticulture and Enology and our membership. This is a subtle change in philosophy from the “old” Trellis Alliance, as we strive to better meet the needs of those consumers, winemakers, grapegrowers and academics comprising our association.

In recent focus groups, you told us that the way the Trellis Alliance could best assist you in achieving your personal and professional goals was through more outreach efforts. You said you want to know more about national and international research efforts that might directly impact your decision-making on a daily basis. Associated research is printed in many journals and varied publications, making keeping up with the most recent work a difficult task. But, luckily, here in the Department of Viticulture and Enology at the University of California, it’s our business to know what’s happening in the world of wine, who’s doing it and where. That connection is the service we hope we’re offering with membership in the Trellis Alliance.

Our largest outreach effort is the annual symposia called “Recent Advances in Viticulture and Enology”, or "RAVE", that is held in spring at U.C. Davis. Everyone who attends the symposia is awarded membership in the Trellis Alliance with their enrollment fee. For more information on RAVE, or to sign up for the annual seminar, go to the U C Davis Extension website at http://extension.ucdavis.edu/unit/winemaking/ RAVE is an intensive, one-day workshop that allows us to bring our faculty, researchers and cooperators together to present their research to industry members, in a manner that encourages interaction and conversation. In recent years, we have changed our program slightly to focus on a particular area of interest and/or concern to our membership and to the industry generally. In 2005, the program focused on recent research on the impact of manipulating winegrape yield on methoxypyrazine content in both grapes and in wines. The entire RAVE 2006 program, focusing on grapevine roots, is available at http://webcast.ucdavis.edu/VitEn/index.htm In 2007, the program focused on the Harbertson Adams Tannin Assay, and included a panel of winemakers who are using the assay to drive stylistic decisions. The RAVE 2007 program can be viewed at http://webcast.ucdavis.edu/VitEn/2007/   The entire RAVE 2009 program, "Focus on Flavor" is now available for viewing at http://wineserver.ucdavis.edu/content.php?category=Trellis%20Alliance&id=843

Another way we seek to maintain this connection between with UCD and worldwide research is accomplished primarily by email news-alerts that we send to our membership. These news-alerts may go out once a week or four times a week, their publication frequency dependent upon when we receive notification of items we feel might be of interest. We have sent out notices of seminars and symposia occurring both nationally and internationally. We have sent out articles from various publications containing results of applied research studies designed to keep our members updated and informed. News items of interest to the international wine industries are also included in our e-news alerts. We send out notices and press releases of events in the industry much closer to home, too. For those of you nearer to Davis, the University offers VEN290 seminars, complimentary to the public, every week in the fall and spring quarters that allow faculty and graduate students the opportunity to discuss their current research. The Trellis Alliance sends out advance news-alerts of the seminar topics so members and friends can attend and bring their questions and concerns directly to the presenters.

So, if you want to know where to go if you have a technical question or you just want to be better informed about the latest state-of-the-art wine and winegrape research, you should join the Trellis Alliance and help us in our outreach efforts. It will ultimately be invaluable to us all.

 

 

Thank you,

Kay Bogart, President

Trellis Alliance