Education

I’ve been looking around at various classes on cider and wine making, and I am sure excited.

I have signed up for Washington State University’s week long Cider Making Workshop taught by Peter Mitchell in the summer of 2010.

However, since cider making is a tiny but growing industry in the United States, and Wandering Aengus Ciderworks confesses that they operate like a winery and are licensed as one, I’m looking into wine making classes to figure out the business and equipment needed to start a cidery. For that, I have found a few sources.

• UC Davis Extension offers many different classes on winemaking and grape growing, including some business classes. They also offer an Online Certificate Program in Winemaking, which can be also taken for non-degree credit to by pass the waiting list.
• Washington State University offers a certificate in Viticulture and Enology as a major or as an online certificate program, which takes two years and three hands on events. There again, if you want to bypass the waiting list to participate in the program, not attend the hands on events, and/or save money, the classes are offered as a self-directed course.
  
• Oregon State University Food Science and Technology Department offers a major in Fermentation and Enology and Vinticulture, and also have a graduate program. However, all of these classes require one to live in Corvallis, OR to attend the program, unlike WSU and UC Davis offering online programs.
• My local community college, Clark College, also offers classes about wine, including learning to taste wine, becoming a sommelier, or an introduction to winemaking.
• South Seattle Community College has a Northwest Wine Academy. They offer an AA or certificate in wine making, wine marketing and sales, or food and wine pairings.
• I’m also excited that this year’s Wine Maker’s Conference is being held in my neck of the woods, and I’m thinking about attending.

I’ve also found a few books on the topic of starting a winery or brewery business.

• The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Starting and Running a Winery (2008), which I have found to be useful.
• I like Sam Calagione’s Brewing Up A Business (2005) much better. Calagione writes about his personal experience starting a brewery, so it is more of a story with highlighted points than a lecture. It also seems to be more encouraging, especially for creative people.

I have checked out from the library, but have not cracked the cover yet:

• How to Launch Your Wine Career by Liz Thach and Brian D’Emilio (2009)
• At Home in the Vineyard: Cultivating a Winery, an Industry, and a Life by Susan Sokol Blosser (2008)
• The Brewers Association’s Guide to Starting Your Own Brewery edited by Ran Daniels (2006)
• My First Crush: Misadventures in Wine Country by Linda Kaplan (2005)
• Wine Country: Architecture and Interiors by Mary Whitesides (2004)

Please note that I am not recommending the books be purchased from the links provided, but that they are just links to provide some information.

There are many more books and classes discussing running a winery as a business that I have not yet found, but I feel that this is a good start.

Thing is, the wine industry is experiencing huge growth because the 20 and 30 somethings are getting interested in wine, and this is a boom I hope to capitalize on. I think it could happen, as cider is able to market itself as beer or wine, and just judging by the recent press, cider making is also a growing industry.

The Beginning

What am I going to blog about? I am planning on documenting what I hope is a beginning of starting my own business of selling fruit wine and cider.

The idea was a slow growing one. I was raised on a farm, but live and work in the city. The recession was coming on, and I'm always looking for ways to do things myself to save a buck. You know, go back to the basics. I moved in with my boyfriend in a house in the suburbs, and finally got to grow a garden. After my boyfriend was upgraded to fiancé, we went to a local distillery, and I was really impressed, thinking, this would be awesome to do myself, but I didn't really do anything about it. However, there was a man in our tour group who said he had brewed cider, and I thought that would be a better starting point since my parents have about six apple trees on their property. Free material source!

I got a hold of some books on cider and started reading them on my honeymoon since I now had time with the wedding being over. I was strictly thinking of doing it as a hobby at this point. There was one day, however, where I was jealous of my husband's summers off from teaching, and the increased recession fears that my new boss didn't know what to do with me and was going to let me go. This idea of having a winery suddenly popped into my head, and I've kind of obsessed with the idea since, knowing that I wouldn't get summers off.

My winery would not sell grape wine because that can be found anywhere. Instead, I draw my inspiration from Shallon Winery in Astoria, OR. It is run by an old gentleman who makes the most wonderful fruit wines, including a cranberry whey wine and a chocolate orange wine. Last time I was there, before I had my idea, I asked what would happen upon his death, as it would be a terrible thing to lose his recipes. Now I hope that I could purchase at least the cranberry whey wine recipe from him.

It has been about four months since I began my hobby research, and now I am beginning to blog about it. I hope you will watch as I try to turn this little hobby into a business.