Blog

When winemakers press grapes, they're after the juice. But what happens to the skins, seeds, and stems that make up nearly 30% of the harvest?

At Terra Madre Americas in Sacramento in September 2025, two UC Davis researchers revealed how this "waste" is becoming the wine industry's next frontier of innovation.

The Sensory Theater fell quiet as Ned Spang, Director of the Robert Mondavi Institute, welcomed a familiar face back to campus. Dr. Hoby Wedler, a UC Davis alumnus who has been blind since birth, returned not just as a chemist, entrepreneur, and sensory expert but as the guide for the first public tasting built entirely around UC Davis student-made wines.

As the new RMI Student Writer covering food science and RMI-related events, I had the opportunity to attend Terra Madre Americas, which was new to me. Having recently been passed the student writer baton by my now graduated food science mentor (thanks, Gwen!), I was excited at the prospect of attending and writing about Terra Madre Americas.

Every Thursday evening during the quarter at UC Davis, undergrads, graduate students, faculty, and researchers come together with wine glasses in hand for VITIS, the wine tasting club run through the Davis Enology and Viticulture Organization (DEVO). Here, they taste wines while learning directly from the people making them.

When Michael Mondavi steps into a room, he brings decades of wine expertise and the living history of Napa Valley with him. On October 7, 2025, the "quiet icon" of California winemaking shared his history, and hard-won lessons about surviving the industry's ups and downs, with students, alumni, and faculty at the Robert Mondavi Institute's Sensory Theater.

The end of the year is fast approaching and we are excited to be working on new upcoming events.

Walk into any brewery and you'll find that after brewing beer massive amounts of "spent grain" are leftover. Every year, America's 9,000 breweries produce roughly 20 billion pounds of spent grain, enough to fill a football stadium several times over. 

It has been a whirlwind since our last newsletter, with multiple sold-out events and news to share.

Last Saturday, we hosted our 12th Annual TASTE Food and Wine Tasting. It was a beautifully cool fall evening filled with camaraderie, great wine, delicious food and lively conversation. We are grateful to every guest who helped raise funds to support public scholarship, highlighting food and beverage innovation and research at UC Davis.

When Terra Madre Americas made its North American debut in Sacramento in September 2026, the three-day festival transformed the city for a vibrant celebration of food, culture, and sustainability. 

Wine tastings, live music, celebrity chef demonstrations, and a bustling street festival brought together food producers, researchers, and consumers from across the Americas. At the center of it all, UC Davis led essential conversations about the future of our food systems.

The Robert Mondavi Institute’s sold-out Savor Series event, hosted in partnership with the UC Davis Library, brought together a panel of experts in wine chemistry, cultural history, human medicine, and nutritional metabolism to tackle one of today’s most debated questions: Is wine healthy? What emerged was a fascinating conversation where science, robust culture, and history converged around a single glass.

Nearly 800 food lovers gathered for a special conversation with James Beard Award-winning chef and Emmy-nominated host Pati Jinich. She is the culinary force behind Pati’s Mexican Table, La Frontera, and her newest series, Pati Jinich Explores Panamericana. Throughout the night, Pati captivated the audience with her bright-eyed curiosity, boisterous laugh, and infectious energy, sharing personal anecdotes that had everyone laughing while revealing her lifelong passion for cooking.

Back in high school, I had no doubt that college was the next step. However, the pressure of choosing a major was colossal! It felt like choosing the rest of my life when asked to select a major. I knew I wanted to do something creative, but I didn’t want to throw away all of my hard-earned A’s in physics, chemistry, and biology. After switching the major option about a hundred times, I finally registered under Undecided - Fine Arts for UC Davis.

From the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences

For every juicy tomato or crunchy almond California grows, there’s a pile of pulp, hulls or scraps that often goes to waste. A new online tool, created by University of California, Davis researchers, tracks those agricultural byproducts aiming to find innovative ways to put them to use.

Students have returned to campus and today marks the start of the fall quarter. It feels like we have hit the ground running as the weather cools and the leaves start to change color.

The food science and technology major offered at UC Davis is a well-rounded mix of theory and practice, with a hands-on learning approach being both effective and expected at California’s No. 1 agricultural school.  This program is internationally recognized and is one of only 88 IFT HERB approved programs , but how did this niche major come to be?