This past fall was a busy one for the UC Davis V and E Extension Team.  On November 30, 2018, we traveled to Escondido, CA in San Diego County to meet growers and vintners in Southern California.  To determine the most relevant topics to present, we worked closely with Carmen Gispert, the Viticulture Farm Advisor for Riverside, San Diego, and San Bernardino counties.  We were excited to have such a great turnout, with 101 people attending.  David Block gave an introduction to winery design, focusing on important considerations for quality through cleanability.  Anita Oberholster spoke about reuse of winery wastewater, Andrew McElrone spoke about deficit irrigation, explaining what it is, what the benefits are, and how to do it. Andrew Walker gave pointers on what to consider when putting in a new vineyard, Kaan Kurtural covered the practical aspects of canopy management, and Carmen gave an update on her irrigation study. 

The next day we hosted Recent Advances in Viticulture and Enology (RAVE) in the ARC Ballroom on the UC Davis Campus.  We had a great turnout, with 149 people in attendance!  One of the highlights of the day was the announcement that the Department would be adding two new viticulture professors to the faculty, Megan Bartlett and Elisabeth Forrestel.  They both gave presentations on the work they have done and what they are thinking about investigating in the future.  Annegret Cantu spoke about the effect of twelve months of in-bottle aging on the phenolic composition, sensory taste, and mouthfeel attributes in Pinot noir, Anita Oberholster talked about the impact of winemaking conditions on phenolic extraction, Andrew Waterhouse informed us about improved analytical methods for SO2, David Block spoke about his work on understanding yeast strain differences through a genome-scale modeling approach, and Andrew Walker gave an update on the current and future objectives of the grape breeding program at UC Davis.  Faculty members Ron Runnebaum and Kaan Kurtural also gave presentations.  In addition to faculty research presentations, nine students and postdoctoral fellows presented posters, five of which were presented as 4-minute flash talks.