Jordan Axe is in her third year as an undergraduate in the Viticulture and Enology program.  She grew up in Walnut Creek, California where she enjoyed the downtown atmosphere and watching her favorite East Bay sports teams play. Growing up so close to wine country, she often accompanied her parents as they went wine tasting on weekends to Napa, Sonoma, and sometimes Monterey.  She had always admired the sophisticated mood in the tasting rooms and watched as people swirled a beautiful assortment of colors and tilted their glasses to their noses to smell all the different aromas. On one such trip, when she was only three years old, a waiter caught her swirling her water glass at a restaurant.

Throughout most of primary and secondary school, Jordan thought she wanted to follow in her father’s footsteps and become a chemical engineer.  Her favorite subjects in school had always been math and science as well as art.  So, for her eighth-grade science project, she fermented and distilled three different sugars into ethanol for biofuel purposes.  She really took a liking to the fermentation process and soon discovered the V&E program at UC Davis.

Since coming to Davis, Jordan has been involving herself in the department as much as she can.  She helped with the Winkler Dinner her freshman year – the Davis Enology and Viticulture Organization’s (DEVO’s) annual fundraising event – and became the Undergraduate Representative for DEVO her sophomore year.  She has also worked two harvests in the UC Davis Pilot Winery under head winemaker Chik Brenneman. She has very much enjoyed meeting her classmates and members of faculty in the department and always jokes, “it takes a full community to raise me.”

This year, Jordan is very excited to serve as DEVO’s president and is hoping to meet new students and make the organization a strong asset to the department.  She is very thankful for the opportunity to be studying winemaking at one of the most prestigious universities around the world for Viticulture and Enology and cannot wait to make closer ties with the industry!