Taking a Class Over Again at Yavapai College

At that place are classes about wine held in the typical settings, inside the buildings of the Yavapai College campus here. But deeper lessons are taught in the vineyards on the hills to the west, and in the winery built within what used to be the campus racquetball courts.

This is where students wrestle with the machine that forces corks into wine bottles, discovering that if a canteen is left nether the machine too long, it will insert a second cork on top of the showtime.

Or that planting 2,000 vines is an all-day ordeal of repetitive back bending labor, fabricated tolerable by esprit and striking scenery.

Arizona'southward vino industry, while nevertheless working to concenter consumers, has besides attracted a subset of devotees: Those who have a dream of leaving their regular jobs backside and becoming full-time winemakers.

Yavapai College wasn't certain what to expect when it started offering classes in wine in 2009. Maybe it would be simply couples wanting to take an appreciation class. Only over time, the courses attracted people who wanted to know not just how to consume vino, merely how to manufacture it.

In 2012, the community college started to offer an Applied Sciences caste in the discipline, letting students graduate with knowledge of both viticulture, the growing of wine grapes, and enology, the making of vino.

The get-go five graduates, the grade of 2014, have all plant work in the field. Michael Pierce, who heads upward the winemaking portion of the school, has hopes the same will soon be said for the vi who will graduate this twelvemonth.

Pierce said there are more than 90 students enrolled in the degree programme. Soon, he said, there will be a waiting list for classes.

The college attracts students like Lindy Wright, who used to live in Scottsdale, merely decided to pack upward her "fellow, the fish and the cat" and move to Cottonwood.

Wright was in the vineyard southwest of the Yavapai College campus on a warm May afternoon, planting vines, which resemble spindly sticks. It was the latest expansion of the campus vineyard, bringing the acreage planted to 12 acres.

While she planted, patting dirt around the vine, another group of students was readying the holes, tossing aside any rocks they found in the soil. Volunteers had shown up at the vineyard that morn, each planting a few vines for fun. Hours later, it was all students. This was not novelty, just classwork.

"This wasn't a career option ten years ago," Wright said.

Where winemakers take flying, with rock-star vintner'due south assistance

Neither was it an bookish option at Yavapai College. But, like those grapevines, and the rows of vineyards spreading beyond the northern and southern parts of the state, the report of Arizona winemaking is growing, slowly only surely, year by year.

An idea

In 2008, Tom Schumacher, so the dean of the community college's Verde Valley campus, was looking for programs to start on campus. He followed a charge from the college president who asked him what would distinguish the campus, a satellite of the college'due south principal operation in Prescott.

Around the same time, a consortium of local winemakers brought the college an idea. Winemaking in the region was growing — non huge yet, but information technology could exist. And the college could play a role.

As a way to test involvement, the college offered a vino appreciation course in 2009. Schumacher enrolled in it every bit a show of support, and because he was interested.

On the outset day, the dean was summoned by a campus security guard concerned that wine bottles were being opened in a classroom. Schumacher assured him that all was well.

The next classes offered were nearly growing grapes, an extension of the agriculture programs that Yavapai College already offered.

Nikki Bagley taught those classes. A Yavapai Higher graduate and self-described "soil nerd," she was working as a consultant for Maynard James Keenan, the vocalizer of rock band Tool, who was planting his vineyards in the Verde Valley.

Bagley said her first section of Introduction to Viticulture had ten students, all retirees who were looking to grow vines in their backyards. The program was seen as something for hobbyist growers.

But the adjacent twelvemonth, the school took an acre of campus and turned it into a vineyard. That was when things started to change.

Keenan and Schumacher worked out an agreement to brand the land a living laboratory – an initial planting of an acre of vines that would be grown and maintained by the students, with the fruit going into Keenan'south wines.

"That put it by the lawn experimental stuff pretty chop-chop," Bagley said. "Students could see where we were going and they went along for the ride."

Schumacher was among the students who planted those starting time 1,000 vines on the land. He recalled being handed the twigs for planting. He took 20 and stuck them in 1 pre-dug hole. Someone else had to tell him merely one sapling belonged in each pigsty.

Keenan, during an interview at the campus vineyard, recalled being frustrated by the bureaucratic delays in the projection, some that weren't removed almost until the state was beingness readied for planting.

"There was such resistance to (the vineyard) until they saw information technology sitting hither and it was, 'Yeah, correct,' " he said. "It's a no-brainer."

A home

With the grapes growing, the next step was to discover a way to make them into wine. Correct next to the vineyard were the campus racquetball courts, which Bagley said were mainly used by students as a spot to swallow tiffin.

Schmacher expected that the winery plan would start a battle with the Yavapai College administration on the principal campus in Prescott. Later all, he was proposing making alcohol on campus. He eventually won the tussles, getting approval for the winery. Just no money.

Schumacher said he went to Keenan, the Tool vocalist, again and he again pledged support. Schumacher also solicited donations from other area winemakers and businesses. Reconstruction of the racquetball courts began in 2013.

A steel roof was placed over the concrete walls. Crews knocked holes through the shared walls and each of the former courts became a quadrant of the new winery building.

One former court held the lab and tank room, some other the barrel room, another the bottling and storage area and the fourth a tasting room, with walls decorated with the rounded staves of barrels.

Keenan has committed to giving graduates of the Yavapai College program the first shot at becoming members of the cooperative winery he started. The Four Eight Wineworks co-op, in nearby Campsite Verde, allows budding vintners the ability to employ winery equipment on a rotating basis. It helps ease the prohibitive toll of becoming a winemaker.

He is using grapes from the beginning planting at the Yavapai Higher vineyard — an Italian varietal called Negroamaro — in the wines sold under the 4 Viii Wineworks label. Those are sold at the Iv Eight Wineworks tasting room, located within a celebrated depository financial institution edifice in downtown Clarkdale.

The 2013 vintage of Four Eight Wineworks Cherry is the first made with grapes grown at the college vineyard.

With the vineyard and winery in place at the higher, students are expected to spend ample time in both to earn their certificate, Pierce said.

They as well are expected to piece of work internships at wineries and vineyards around the country, he said.

"The hope is that they can start developing relationships and learn from dissimilar people," Pierce said. And that those relationships might lead to jobs.

"Winemaking is absolutely a stylistic try," Pierce said. "You tin't just learn from ane winemaker and say (that) you're set up. Y'all kind of need that procedure of going around and talking to a lot of people, accepting some things for yourself and kind of developing your own manner as a winemaker."

Pierce said at that place are even so some students who take classes casually, but that most desire to make this their profession.

The program attracts young people looking to make wine their start career, and retirees looking to go far their second.

Some desire opportunities in the many jobs the manufacture offers, in the vineyard, in the lab or in the sales and marketing office, he said. Well-nigh 1-tertiary of the students, he estimated, want to someday operate their own wineries and vineyards.

Pierce said he relates to his students because he was in their shoes not long ago. Pierce and his father started making wine at habitation and that led to a three-day seminar at the University of California-Davis and working harvests in New Zealand and Australia. Pierce became a winemaker at Arizona Stronghold Vineyards in 2013. Then, he and his begetter, Dan Pierce, bought a vineyard in Willcox and make wine under the Bodega Pierce and Saeculum Cellars labels.

"I don't accept to pull teeth to get the class involved in discussions," Pierce said. "It's definitely a shared passion."

The showtime

On a tardily April evening, a group of students gathered in the winery for bottling.

A small group of onlookers had gathered, including a photographer and videographer from the higher. Pierce made a small-scale speech thanking everyone, then turned back into instructor, preparing the students for the procedure. "You lot guys should know how to do this by now," he said to the students. "Let's become going."

The tank belongings the wine was raised on a forklift, allowing gravity to take information technology down the hose and into the bottling line. Students rotated between jobs, so everyone could fill up, cork, label the bottles and pack them into case boxes.

Pierce directed educatee Alissa Kueker how to stack the case boxes on a pallet. One square of iii boxes along this widest edge, topped by rows of iv boxes stacked along the narrower border.

"Wait, three, 4, four, iii, is that what he said?" Kueker asked another pupil a few minutes subsequently.

The instance boxes were marked with in black felt pen with this lawmaking: 14 SWC Vi. That stood for the 2014 vintage of the Viognier from Southwest Wine College.

James Perey, the current dean of the Clarkdale campus, on hand to watch this bottling, walked over to the kickoff filled case box and marked information technology with another code: 1st.

Chris Whitehorn

Chris Whitehorn was built-in and raised in Flagstaff. He went to high school there. And got a job there. Because that seemed like it was what he was supposed to practice.

"Non a lot of direction," Whitehorn said of his mail-high school years. The task was just for the paycheck. Working as a security supervisor at a country club wasn't his passion. "I was just trying to discover my way through," he said.

Whitehorn had a lot of fourth dimension to read, he said, and observe his passion. He started experimenting with home brewing and dwelling winemaking. "Fermentation, I guess y'all could say," he said.

Whitehorn saw in that location were classes at Yavapai Higher in Clarkdale. A few years later on, he saw the college offered a full degree. "I was excited," he said. "I'1000 similar, OK, I can get a piece of newspaper."

Whitehorn had adult an interest in wine while working at the Forest Highlands Golf Gild, whose clubhouse featured a vino cellar. But he realized that being a sommelier wasn't for him.

Being in the vineyard was for him. He enjoyed "simply kind of being in tune with the crop and other living organisms," he said.

Whitehorn said other students seemed surprised at the corporeality of labor involved in maintaining a vineyard. "Some people that get into it not expecting to exist out in the sun," he said. "Information technology's nearly monk-like ... it's almost like a dedication to being out."

Whitehorn volition graduate this twelvemonth, and he has already landed a full-time job at Javelina Bound Winery and Vineyards in Cornville. He helps on all aspects of the vineyard and the winery, something that he said he wouldn't have experienced had he gone to apprentice at a California operation.

"I probably would take either been in the field or in the lab and never the two shall encounter," he said. "Here you can do it all."

Eventually, Whitehorn hopes to offset his own vineyard. "I've gotten a good handle on winemaking," he said, "but there seems like there is a big demand for fruit and in that location'south always room for more."

Whitehorn said the vineyard always brings new lessons. Post-obit its schedule has even changed his perception of what a twelvemonth means. "You start reckoning fourth dimension that way," he said, "Harvest rather than months."

Julia Dixon

Julia Dixon and her husband had been wine fans and, after a visit to the Willcox Vino Festival in 2013, from which they toted home four cases, they became fans of Arizona vino.

That led to visiting more state wineries. And that led the Chandler couple to thinking that maybe they should do more than just be consumers of vino.

They had a normal life in suburban Phoenix. He worked equally an analyst for a software visitor. She worked at Safeway. They had two grown kids and were heading for a life of content retirement. Which was the problem.

"My husband was like, 'We don't want to retire like our parents,' " Dixon said. She agreed.

They had heard about the Yavapai College classes. Possibly this was the path.

He crunched the numbers and determined they could brand information technology work.

Dixon said they delineated responsibilities. He would keep his day job and make the financial decisions for their project. She would have the classes and do most of the easily-on labor at the vineyard.

They sold their Chandler house and uprooted their lives to Cottonwood in June 2014. Dixon enrolled at Yavapai Higher that Baronial.

Their house is smaller and the nearest Target is nearly 30miles away, but Dixon said, "I can't imagine it any other style."

Though the couple expected to be empty nesters, their children have moved back in with them, making for a close-knit family because of the concrete space. But Dixon said no i minds. And it gives her ample time with her 8-month-old granddaughter, Julianna.

Meanwhile, she has taken a function-fourth dimension job in the tasting room of Oak Creek Vineyards in Cornville. She has one year left in the Yavapai College programme, during which she volition take classes on winemaking.

She said being effectually agreeing people has given her a heave she wouldn't accept received had she taken distance-learning classes.

"Having those people around you who are like, 'Oh, yeah, this is going to be great," Dixon said. "All these crazy, wonderful people (who) within a year have become friends."

Dixon said she'southward confident that her fellow students will find work in wine. All want to start small, she said, and that will produce a thriving manufacture. Dixon wants to start a two-acre vineyard that she can found and tend herself.

She had worked the past semester on readying state for the college's latest 2-acre vineyard expansion, along a hillside a brusk hike from campus. The process took v months, let her know all the steps involved. "It'south a daunting task, but I don't call back I'one thousand agape of it anymore," she said.

Already, she said, her fellow students take told her to telephone call them for help when it comes to fix her land.

Dixon set herself a goal: to accept her name on a vino label by the time she turns 55. "I've got seven years," she said, "I've got to get decorated."

That would mean a winery would purchase grapes from her vineyard and think enough of them to identify the source of the grapes on the label.

"To create something that will bring – I know it sounds kind of corny – but will bring enjoyment to other people," she said. "It's an heady thought. It's a dream to follow, a dream to chase."

John Rachel

John Rachel has lived in the Verde Valley for the past 53 years, spending much of his developed life working for the Postal service. His retirement year was pegged for 2016.

When the lx-yr-onetime thought virtually what he would do after he retired, he idea mayhap he'd get into real manor. "Simply, this vision I've come across," Rachel said, standing in the vineyard exterior Yavapai College, before he reported to a classroom for his grade on the science of winemaking.

Rachel worked as the postmaster of Cottonwood for 15 years. He was appointed to exist postmaster in Clarkdale earlier this twelvemonth.

During that time, Rachel saw the Verde Valley surface area go heavy with vineyards. He became interested.

He took what he described as a "crash course" on wine over 3 days at the Academy of California-Davis. When he heard virtually the caste plan at Yavapai Higher, he started taking ane course at a time, afterwards his postmaster duties.

He gravitated towards the vineyard. In 2004, he had bought some property in the Page Springs area in what he figured would exist his retirement home. Rachel has at present cleared it with an eye on making it a vineyard. He's planning for one that covers vi.v acres. He'south planning on putting in his first ii acres next year.

In the meantime, he's disposed the vineyards at the D.A. Ranch on weekends.

But, he said, that love of the vineyard grew while taking care of the one on the higher's campus. "Taking care of this one-half acre," he said, "has been a point of learning if I actually desire to do it."

He'south too thinking about an aspect of vino that doesn't involve the vineyard or the winery: delivery.

Rachel said the Mail is always looking to expand its businesses and that perchance information technology could get into the wine delivery business. Rachel said he might want to consult on such an expansion.

Being a resident of the Verde Valley for his adult life, Rachel has seen the growth of the wine manufacture, from Eric Glomski opening his doors at Folio Springs Cellars more a decade agone, to the line of tasting rooms that take brought life to Old Town Cottonwood.

He sees the students graduating from the higher every bit spurring a second wave of growth.

"This is going to be a smashing development for the Verde Valley area," he said.

And it'southward been a great development for him. It has created a identify of repose he had never known.

"The grapes," he said, "It's relaxing… just existence with the green growth."

bushongwilack97.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.azcentral.com/story/entertainment/dining/wine/2015/09/13/wanted-make-wine-went-college/72096966/

Share this post