UC Davis launches world’s first LEED Platinum winery

The University of California, Davis, is launching the most technologically advanced and environmentally sophisticated winery in the world, one that promises to unlock longstanding mysteries about the wine industry in California and around the globe.

Construction of the $15 million teaching-and-research winery was completed in July, and crush is now under way there. The new winery is expected to be the first winery in the world to earn LEED Platinum certification, the highest environmental rating awarded by the U.S. Green Building Council. (LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design.) The winery is designed to become self-sustainable in energy and water use after all of its features are on line.

The winery is adjacent to a new 12-acre teaching-and-research vineyard and located within the campus’s Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science, which opened in 2008.

The winery is part of a new 34,000-square-foot complex that also encompasses a brewery and food-processing pilot plant, also built to LEED Platinum standards. The new complex was designed, constructed and equipped entirely with funds from private donors; no federal or state funds were used.

A capstone of the winery is a $1 million assembly of 152 wireless fermentors, designed, fabricated and donated to the UC Davis Department of Viticulture and Enology by a team of research engineers led by T.J. Rodgers, founder, president and chief executive officer of San Jose, Calif.-based Cypress Semiconductor.

“The new teaching-and-research winery and vineyard are game-changers for the winemaking and grape growing program at UC Davis, and they will help California winemaking advance dramatically in both quality and sustainability,” said wine chemist Andrew Waterhouse, the Marvin Sands Endowed Chair in UC Davis’ Department of Viticulture and Enology.

“The winery’s new fermentation system is unlike anything in the wine industry, providing our researchers and students with unparalleled precision as they attempt to unravel the mysteries of wine,” Waterhouse said.

High-tech fermentation system

Each of the 200-liter, electro-polished, stainless steel fermentors is individually equipped for automated control of temperature and the “pump-over” process, controlling two of the most important factors in determining final wine characteristics and quality.

Additionally, newly designed fermentor sensors frequently and precisely extract and transmit sugar-concentration data from white and red fermentations across a wireless network. Data from the sensors can be generated every 15 minutes with a precision of 0.25 Brix, a measure of sugar content.

“The creation of these sensors involved applying complex mathematical procedures in order to extract precise measurements from an inherently ‘noisy’ fermentation environment, and then transmitting that data to a secure computer server using the latest radio frequency technology,” said Roger Boulton, a winery engineering expert and the Stephen Sinclair Scott Endowed Chair in Enology at UC Davis.

David Block, a biochemical engineer and vice chair of the UC Davis Department of Viticulture and Enology, noted that the new fermentation system and adjacent controlled-temperature rooms will enable wine scientists and students to conduct high-precision winemaking studies and probe how different variables such as grape-growing practices, vineyard location and choice of yeast strains impact the character and quality of wines.

“No other viticulture and enology research organization has a facility with these capabilities,” Block said. “And when it is fully implemented, it will contain one of the largest wireless networks in any fermentation facility in the world.”

LEED Platinum environmental design

The new teaching and research winery was designed as a test bed for production processes and techniques that conserve water, energy and other vital resources.

The facility’s environmentally friendly features include onsite solar power generation and a large-capacity system for capturing rainwater and conserving processing water. The stored rainwater will be used for landscaping and toilets, per LEED specifications.

UC Davis is raising funds to construct and equip an auxiliary building to house equipment that will make it possible to capture, store and recycle rainwater, which will be used in an automated system to clean barrels, tanks and fermentors. The proposed system would filter this water, reusing 90 percent of the captured rainwater volume.

“We want to demonstrate a self-sufficiency model that is applicable to any business with limited water,” Boulton said, noting that plans call for eventually operating the facility independent of the main campus water line. “We are aiming for the winery to be completely self-sustainable in both water and energy,” he said.

Additionally, the winery has been designed to capture carbon dioxide, a natural byproduct of fermentation, from a port in each of the new fermentors. An innovative process will be used to remove the carbon dioxide from the winery, reducing the building’s energy requirements for air quality and temperature control. Plans call for eventually capturing and storing the carbon dioxide produced by the winery, so that it will not contribute to global warming.

“The goal is for the facility to be not just carbon neutral, but carbon zero, in terms of its carbon emissions,” Boulton said.

Other environmentally responsible features include maximum use of natural light, rooftop photovoltaic cells to provide all of the facility’s power at peak load, use of recycled glass in the flooring, interior paneling recycled from a 1928 wooden aqueduct, and use of lumber that was harvested from sustainably certified forest operations.

The new complex housing the winery was designed by a team of architects, engineers and builders including BNB Norcal of San Mateo, Flad Architects of San Francisco, F.M. Booth Mechanical, Red Top Electric, KPW Structural Engineers, Creegan + D’Angelo Civil Engineers and HLA Landscape Architects.

Individual donors make vision a reality

Dozens of private donors contributed funds for the new winery, beginning with a $5 million contribution in 2001 from the late winemaker, Robert Mondavi.

Other major donations were made by Ronald and Diane Miller and by a group of winery partners, led by Jess Jackson and his wife Barbara Banke of Kendall-Jackson Wines, and Jerry Lohr of J. Lohr Vineyards & Wines. The group of winery partners secured the funds needed to design and construct the facility to meet LEED Platinum standards.

In all, more than 150 individuals, alumni, corporations and foundations contributed funds to make the winery, brewery and food-processing complex a reality. These included major contributions from the Department of Viticulture and Enology’s Board of Visitors and Fellows.

About the UC Davis Department of Viticulture and Enology

Established in 1880 by California legislative mandate, the UC Davis Department of Viticulture Enology has been at the forefront of international grape and wine innovation for 130 years. The department partners with the California grape and wine industry through research, public service and equipping students with both scientific knowledge and practical skills.

The department includes 14 faculty members and enrolls 100 undergraduate students and 40 graduate students.

More information about the department and the new winery is available online at http://wineserver.ucdavis.edu.

Media Resources

Pat Bailey, Research news (emphasis: agricultural and nutritional sciences, and veterinary medicine), 530-219-9640, pjbailey@ucdavis.edu

Roger Boulton, Viticulture and Enology, (530) 752-0900, rbboulton@ucdavis.edu