The following faculty received awards and honors this Spring.
Congratulations to our very own Distinguished Professor, Dr. David E. Block for receiving the 2026 American Society for Enology and Viticulture Merit Award — the Society’s highest honor!
Dr. Block has spent his career bridging chemical engineering and real-world winemaking, advancing fermentation science in ways wineries actually use. After more than 12 years leading the UC Davis Department of Viticulture & Enology (V&E) and helping shape the next generation of wine scientists, this recognition couldn’t be more deserved. He’ll be formally recognized at the ASEV National Conference in Boise this June.
Dr. Ha Nguyen, a sensory scientist and the newest appointed faculty member in the department, has been awarded an NIH/NIDCD Early Career Research (ECR R21) grant to support a three-year project titled “Mechanisms of Bitterness Reduction by Sweeteners.”
While sweeteners are widely used to mitigate bitterness in foods, beverages, and pharmaceuticals, their effectiveness varies considerably, and the underlying biological mechanisms remain poorly understood, limiting our ability to predict bitter suppression and identify optimal modulators. This project addresses that gap by investigating how different sweeteners modulate the perception of bitterness from two representative active compounds. The research integrates human sensory studies with cell-based assays targeting different human bitter taste receptors (T2Rs), enabling a mechanistic, receptor-level understanding of bitter suppression. The results will elucidate how sweeteners reduce bitterness, guiding the formulation of more palatable foods, beverages, and medicines while potentially reducing the consumption of sugars and non-sugar sweeteners.
Although motivated in part by applications in food and pharmaceutical systems, the findings are also directly relevant to wine sensory perception. Bitterness in wine—arising from phenolic compounds and other secondary metabolites—can strongly influence perceived quality and consumer acceptance. By elucidating how bitter modulation works, this research may inform new strategies to optimize flavor balance in wines, particularly for no- and low-alcohol wines or products targeted to specific consumer segments.
Dr. Nguyen’s current research program integrates psychophysical, sensory, and consumer approaches with cutting-edge genetic, molecular, physicochemical, and data science tools to advance sensory knowledge, improve sensory practices for quality control and product innovation, and address global challenges in food and nutrition security—both broadly and within the context of viticulture and enology, including sustainability, climate change adaptation, smoke taint mitigation, and the development of no- or low-alcohol products.