Culture Collection

The Enology Culture Collection, housed in the Department of Viticulture and Enology, is an extensive collection of wine yeast and bacteria from around the world. Strains are stored as live frozen cultures. It contains more than 2000 yeast strains and over 200 bacterial strains. Recently we have begun to add the important fungus Botrytis cinerea to the collection as well. Lucy Joseph manages the collection, under the direction of Professor Linda F. Bisson with consultation from Dr. David Mills and Dr. R.E. Kunkee. This collection has been in the Viticulture and Enology Department since the 1930’s and was originally derived from Professor Cruess’ yeast collection in the University of California’s Fruit Products Divi...