Published 12:00 am PDT Wednesday March 14 2007
Story appeared in TASTE section, Page F1
Jose Lovaglio of Argentina, left, Karishma Grover of India and Jonas Mueller of Germany, three students studying winemaking at UC Davis, hang out in the school's wine cellar. Sacramento Bee/Jos e Luis Villegas
In 1935, not long after the repeal of Prohibition, the University of California's department of viticulture and enology moved to Davis from Berkeley, where it had been established in 1880.
Ever since, students have been pausing in Davis en route to careers as grape growers, winemakers, lab technicians, cellar workers.
Most are American, but each year about 10 percent of the department's students are from outside the United States -- South Africa, Argentina, Israel, Mexico, Italy, Korea, India and France are some of the countries of origin.
They pay a premium -- this year, $27,007 in student fees for undergraduates compared with $8,323 for Californians -- but few other centers of wine education and research have the stature of UC Davis.
"My studies at Davis (showed me) the pros and cons in winemaking technology," says Christian Moueix, one of the world's more accomplished winemakers.
Moueix owns both Chateau Petrus in Bordeaux and Dominus Estate in Napa Valley. He was a graduate student at UC Davis in the late 1960s.
Unlike Moueix, most international students at UC Davis don't end up in California but return home to use their Davis education to compete against their former classmates in an increasingly global economy.
Nonetheless, this seems not to bother any of the students, regardless of where they are from.
"I have never encountered a (negative) attitude from any of my fellow students," says Jose Lovaglio, a senior from Argentina. "On the contrary, a lot of the American students have asked me about internships abroad to learn our ways of making wine.
"
Lovaglio is one of three international students who today will talk about how they got to UC Davis, what they are learning and where they eventually hope to apply their lessons. The others are Karishma Grover from India and Jonas M eller from Germany.
Age: 22 Home: Mendoza, Argentina Year: Senior
Even if he'd wanted to, Jose Lovaglio couldn't have escaped the smells of fermenting grape juice as he grew up.
His home was in his family's Argentine winery.
"The upper floor, connected by a staircase that doesn't even have a door, is our house. From our living room we could watch people working at the tanks," Lovaglio recalls between classes at UC Davis.
Over the past four years, he's learned the science behind those smells, but their pull remains personal and strong.
"They have a lot of emotional attachments to me. They are like my grandmother's or my mother's cooking.
They are certain things I identify with," says Lovaglio, who aside from his snazzy Euro shoes is dressed in timeless campus fashion -- hooded sweat shirt, denim, backpack.
His mother may be a fine cook, but she's better known as one of Argentina's more accomplished winemakers, Susana Balbo, who with her husband, viticulturist Pedro Marchevsky, own the Mendoza winery Dominio del Plata.
"That's 'silver domain,' for a silver mountain aligned from the entrance of the winery," Lovaglio says.
(His father, also Jose Lovaglio, died in 2002.)
He's eager to return to Mendoza, but he'll take the long way home after he graduates this spring. Inspired by his exposure to Asian studies at UC Davis, and mindful that Asia is growing as both wine market and wine competitor, he plans to head to China to continue to learn Chinese.
"It's a skill that will be helpful when I open new markets if I end up working with my parents."
Unusual for a winery anywhere, Dominio del Plata exports about 95 percent of the 55,000 cases of wine it makes annually.
In five years, he sees himself back in Argentina, teamed up with his parents.
"I'd like to expand on the possibilities, to improve the company and the industry. I'd like to address issues that people without my training haven't been able to do," Lovaglio says.
UC Davis, he adds, has given him a modern scientific grounding often lacking in Argentina.
"Mostly, I will be better able to explain to people why they do certain things in the winery," Lovaglio says. "So maybe we would be a little more efficient.
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