VEN 127L, officially known as "Post-Fermentation Wine Processing", is a hands-on course for V&E students designed to equip them with practical skills in winemaking. This course was created in 2018, after receiving industry feedback highlighting the need for more graduates who are skilled in post-fermentation processes, including hands-on experience in the winery.

In VEN 127L, students learn to blend, adjust, fine, age, stabilize, filter, and package wines. The course emphasizes real-world experience, allowing students to apply their theoretical knowledge from their previous UC Davis courses to practical winemaking tasks. This approach helps students develop critical problem-solving skills essential for the wine industry. Traditional textbooks, quizzes, and tests are not embedded into the course. Instead, students work in small teams to produce a red wine and a white wine during the 10-week quarter. Industry experts are invited to participate as consultants, providing valuable insights and guidance, from blending to packaging.

In this course, students learn to use small-scale tests and taste evaluations to make decisions about wine processing. They learn how to operate wine processing equipment and understand how to scale up from small trials to their team’s wines. Students also assess how processing affects the taste and chemistry of a red wine and a white wine, by performing bench trials on additions of sugar, acid, tannins, oak alternatives, and fining agents, as examples.  Students also choose all packaging and assure all choices are compatible, as well as design the label, get approval from the TTB (COLA), and work with a printer to produce the labels. The final products are presented to a panel of winemaker consultants and faculty for evaluation, along with their reasoning for each operation taken.

Students are graded based on group memos summarizing weekly results and decisions, weekly presentations of their wine’s status and decision making, and the final presentation of their wines to both a winemaking audience and a potential consumer audience. VEN 127L aims to bridge the gap between academic learning and industry needs, preparing students to address new challenges in viticulture and enology. For Spring 2025, special recognition goes to:

Instructors

• David Block

• Leticia Chacón Rodríguez

UC Davis Teaching and Research Winery Staff

• Fermin Ledesma Ramirez 

• Chris Johnson

Teaching Assistant

• Arpa Boghozian

Lab Manager

• Cristina Medina-Plaza

Wine Consultants

• Carol Franzia (Zinc House Farm/Clark Ferrea Wines)

• Tamra Lotz (Mumm Napa Valley)

• Avery Heelan (Larkmead Vineyards)

To learn more about VEN 127L, check out Tatiana Muñiz’s article from Spring 2023, Winemaking 101: How to make wine in just 10 weeks.