Wine Research Centre
The construction of the Plumpton Wine Research Centre is well underway now. The architect’s plans were drafted and submitted for planning permission in March 2011, and the drive to raise funding was launched in May 2011. Thanks to support from the Rathfinny Wine Company, the Merrydown Trust and many others, sufficient funding was secured by March 2012 to go ahead with the building.
Construction started in July 2012. The building project also includes other facilities (such as a wine and winery equipment store) and should be completed and fully operational by July 2013.
When the Centre opens, it will become the only dedicated Wine Research Centre in Britain, providing an invaluable problem-solving facility for both the English and Welsh wine production industries and the English Wine Trade.
The Plumpton Wine Research Centre will form a hub for enquiry, through trials and experimentation, into fields including viticulture; winemaking; and wine sensory evaluation, chemical analysis and quality assurance. It will consist of the Jack Ward Laboratory (where a host of analytical techniques such as UV spectrophotometry and high performance liquid chromatography will be employed), offices for the research team and PhD students, and the Rathfinny experimental winery, where micro-vinificatons of trial wines will be carried out under controlled conditions.
The Wine students at Plumpton College, of which there are currently around 140 full time and 250 part-time, will be the first to benefit from this project. The next generation of wine producers will have greatly improved facilities for developing their research skills, and will be able to progress from undergraduate degrees to Masters, PhD and eventually post-doctoral research. English and Welsh wine producers will also derive a substantial benefit by addressing the industry’s challenges to the research centre; an active research facility is critical to the success of developing wine industries. Companies in the UK wine trade could also use the facility if they wish to have their products and procedures (such as bottling) tested and improved in a convenient and totally independent location.
The Plumpton Wine Research Centre will focus on cool-climate wine production, particularly sparkling wine. In these challenging times for state education, its construction has only been possible due to support from members of the UK wine production, trade and associated industries.
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