Community college in Walla Walla toasts new wine center

WALLA WALLA — Christine Havens, Drew Bertinelli, Verdie Morrison and Jordan Reed are perched high up on a catwalk of a grape-crushing machine. It's 10 a.m. on a sunny, warm October day, and the Walla Walla Community College students are about to take part in a historic moment.

A student down below hits the "on" button, and the French-built crusher whirs and clatters to life. The four begin to sort deep-purple clusters of merlot grapes tipped out of a one-ton bin, directing them down a chute into the maw of the machine.

This is the first harvest to be processed at the college's new Center for Enology and Viticulture. A year from now, white wines made by students and bottled under the state-licensed College Cellars label will be ready for sale at the on-campus winery. The merlot being crushed on this day and other reds will be for sale in 2005.

This makes Walla Walla Community College one of only two schools in the nation producing wines for sale to the public. (The other is California State University at Fresno.)

Grapes purchased and donated this year from the Walla Walla and Columbia valleys will be turned into six red and white wines, totaling 400 cases, said viticulturist Stan Clarke. He and enologist Mike Moyer comprise the winemaking faculty.

As the school's own 10-acre teaching vineyard becomes fully planted and mature in coming years, the volume is expected to reach 1,200 cases.

Filling a need

Under a Mediterranean-style tiled roof, the 15,000-square-foot center — which will have its official christening Friday — is the embodiment of a growing state wine industry recognizing it needs to cultivate its own skilled work force.

"If I look into the next 10 years, I just don't see that our graduates are going to find it difficult to be employed," said Myles Anderson, director of the college's new center and co-owner of Walla Walla Vintners winery.

An industry survey by Washington State University in 2001 predicted that 4,700 more people with community college or university training in vineyard and winery sciences and operations will be needed by 2006 to support the state's growing wine industry, now numbering more than 250 wineries (at least 10 more than last fall) and employing about 11,500 people.

A near-capacity 38 full-time students are enrolled in the center's enology and viticulture program. It offers a one-year certificate in the disciplines and a two-year associate of science degree, with credits transferable to WSU's more heavily science- and research-focused four-year programs.

Thirty more are enrolled as part-time students in the Walla Walla program, and another 40 people are taking evening classes in hobby winemaking.

While a handful of colleges across the nation have teaching wineries and vineyards, Walla Walla is the only one to add a full-blown commercial kitchen, allowing the school to incorporate wine knowledge and service into its culinary-arts program.

That program, which coordinator Steve Walk said will turn out graduates able to manage all aspects of a fine-dining restaurant, as well as prepare meals, started this year with seven students.

"Food and wine go hand in hand," said Walk, adding that demand is at an all-time high in the hospitality industry in Washington and elsewhere for restaurant staff skilled in both. "They're already beating my door down, wanting students."

New life in a rural town

As much as the center is intended to provide hands-on training to meet industry needs statewide, it's also a tangible recognition of vines, wines and hospitality as major economic engines in Walla Walla.

It's a triad that is powering the community out of the doldrums of a long-depressed wheat and pea economy.

"We now have one of the lowest unemployment rates in the state and one of the lowest unemployment rates in (county) history, and you have to ask yourself why," said Walla Walla Community College President Steve VanAusdle.

To him, the "why" is largely answered by the still-growing local wine and hospitality industry. Over the past five years the number of wineries in the region has soared from 10 to 53, with College Cellars the latest addition. Hotels, motels and inns, along with a number of fine-dining restaurants, also have been springing up.

One of the world's leading wine magazines, Wine Spectator, took notice of Walla Walla's turnaround in a featured story this month.

"Almost everyone here believes that the transformation of this town of 30,000 from a moribund wheat-farmers' outpost to something of a tourist destination happened because of wine," contributing editor Bruce Schoenfeld wrote.

But VanAusdle said the level of local interest in the industry wasn't totally clear until 1999, when Anderson, then the college's director of counseling, started teaching a generic vines-to-wines evening class and industry-focused seminars. The evening classes were instantly popular, and the seminars attracted people from Spokane and the Seattle area who would drive or fly in to attend, VanAusdle said.

The formal two-year degree program was launched in 2000. Classes — from the science of making wine to the art of marketing it — were taught on campus, and hands-on training was provided at local vineyards and wineries while plans were laid for the new center.

Word about the hands-on curriculum spread regionally and then nationally, with students from as far away as the East Coast inquiring about the program.

"It just took off," VanAusdle said. "It just went crazy. It spilled over into something much bigger than we ever thought."

Two-thirds of the students currently enrolled are from the Pacific Northwest and the remainder from California and elsewhere across the nation, Anderson said. He said he knows of only two students with thoughts of leaving the state after graduating to work in the wine industry elsewhere.

Tuition to graduate with the two-year degree will be about $4,800 for Washington residents and $3,000 more for most out-of-state students, Anderson said. Oregon students pay no extra and Idaho students only a little more tuition due to reciprocity agreements with community-college systems in those states.

Support from many sources

With any build-it-and-they-will-come doubts removed, the remaining questions for college officials in 2001 were how much could be built into the center, and where to get the money.

That proved to be not much of a problem. When officials gather Friday to dedicate the $4.1 million facility, all but the $250,000 needed to complete a certified, state-of-the-art grape- and wine-analysis lab will be in hand.

Linda Hardy, executive director of the Walla Walla Community College Foundation, headed the two-year fund-raising campaign. "When we started, we got 100 percent participation from the Walla Walla wineries and a lot of participation from the vineyard growers," she said.

Support then started flowing in from private and industry interests from Portland to Seattle, and from around Eastern Washington and the Walla Walla Valley.

Local public funding has come from an eight-tenths of 1 percent portion of local sales taxes the Port of Walla Walla and Walla Walla County receive for economic development. That amount, for 2002 and this year, will total $450,000.

Earlier this year, the Legislature and the State Board of Community and Technical Colleges authorized nearly $1 million in economic stimulus and high-demand education funds to add to the center's coffers.

The center also will help pay its own way with sales of its College Cellar wines, which will be for sale only on campus.

Anderson sees one potential problem — but it's a nice problem to have. "We're going to have to work hard to hold on to our students before they graduate," he said.

"The industry is going to make it very lucrative for them to enter the work force."

Thomas P. Skeen: 509-525-3300 or tskeen@ubnet.com