Washington State University now features the largest experimental, non-commercial winemaking facility in the Pacific Northwest.

The research winery, which is located at the WSU Irrigated Agriculture Research and Extension Center in Prosser, has a production capacity of about 5,000 gallons. The new facility was designed by enologists James Harbertson and Kerry Ringer, scientists in the WSU Department of Food Science. The facility will be used to conduct research in support of the region’s rapidly growing wine industry.

“We designed the winery for small-lot, research-scale production,” said Harbertson. The winery will produce multiple small lots of wines under controlled and reproducible conditions, said Harbertson and Ringer.

“We spent about six months designing the facility,” said Ringer. “We wanted to make sure that we had the capability to conduct the research the industry needs, so that meant ordering a lot of custom-made equipment.”

The experimental winery includes 73 stainless steel fermentation tanks that are temperature controllable. The tanks range from 26- to 260-gallon capacity. Temperature in the tanks is monitored and controlled by a Web-based system called TankNET.

With the new winemaking facility, Harbertson said, “there are lots of questions we can now address. But our main issues are pretty much all practical. How does one piece of equipment affect the winemaking process compared with another? And how do viticultural practices affect grape quality and, in turn, wine quality?”

The scientists wasted no time in getting winemaking research projects under way. WSU viticulturist Markus Keller and his team harvested chardonnay grapes from a research vineyard early in the morning of Oct. 1. Within a few hours, the first batch of grapes were pressed and left to settle over night. The next morning, yeast was added and a new series of winemaking experiments was under way.

Dan Bernardo, dean of the WSU College of Agricultural, Human, and Natural Resource Sciences, announced formalization of the partnership here today at the annual meeting of the Washington Association of Wine Grape Growers.

“Washington desperately needs an icon that can represent the diversity and quality of its agricultural enterprise,” Bernardo said. “The science behind the food is a critical, compelling story to tell. With the completion of the Clore Center, we will have a world-class stage, in eastern Washington, on which to present our heritage as well as the evolving research that will improve our future.”

Bernardo said WSU is “very excited to join with the Clore Center’s Board of Directors and the entire state’s food, wine, agriculture and tourism industries in making this visionary project a reality. The center is a natural extension of the foundational work Dr. Walter Clore did to help found the Washington wine industry, and it provides many opportunities to highlight the science and education behind the entire agriculture and food system within the state.”

The late Walter Clore, who was a WSU faculty member for nearly 40 years, was named the “Father of the Washington Wine Industry” by an act of the Washington State Legislature in 2001, in recognition of his efforts proving that premium wine grapes could be grown in Washington state. Members of the viticulture and enology community from across the state began plans in 2002 to develop a center named for him to highlight the burgeoning Washington wine industry.