<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; ">Courtesy of the Seattle Times at:</div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; "><br></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; "><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 19px; white-space: nowrap; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-text-size-adjust: none; "><a href="http://seattletimes.com/text/2021014009.html">http://seattletimes.com/text/2021014009.html</a></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; "><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 19px; white-space: nowrap; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-text-size-adjust: none; "> </span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; ">-------------------------------------------</div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; "><br></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; "><blockquote style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); "><p style="margin: 0px; font-size: 16px; "><font size="5"><b>Sip, spit: Underage wine students can now taste subject </b></font><br></p><h5>By Katherine Long / <br>Seattle Times higher education reporter</h5><div class="body" style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; text-align: left; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; "><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; font-size: 13px; ">Before now, Reggie Daigneault’s college courses were off-limits to traditional college-age students, no matter how much they — or in some cases, their parents — begged for them to be admitted.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; font-size: 13px; ">That’s because Daigneault is a wine instructor whose students must sample as many as 100 different wines during a 12-week course at South Seattle Community College’s Northwest Wine Academy. And only students age 21 and older could participate.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; font-size: 13px; ">That will change this summer, when Washington becomes one of a handful of states allowing 18- to 20-year-olds to taste wine while they are enrolled in a community- or technical-college program teaching viticulture, enology or culinary arts.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; font-size: 13px; ">The catch: Students are allowed to taste, but not consume, alcohol. Or, as it’s known in the industry, to sip and spit.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; font-size: 13px; ">“It’s in our syllabi — <em>all</em> our students must spit,” Daigneault said.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; font-size: 13px; ">With more than 700 wineries in Washington state, three community colleges — Walla Walla, Yakima Valley and South Seattle — have programs to teach various aspects of viticulture (cultivating wine grapes) and enology (the study of winemaking). The bill, SB 5774, was an easy sell to the Legislature; Gov. Jay Inslee signed it into law last month after it passed the House and Senate by large margins.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; font-size: 13px; ">Without the legislation, students who enroll in community college right after high school are finishing up their programs — and out of financial aid — before they’re old enough to legally raise a wineglass to their lips. “They’re already gone, and we’ve missed that opportunity,” Daigneault said.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; font-size: 13px; ">“It’s a competitiveness issue, a jobs issue,” said state Sen. Janéa Holmquist Newbry, R-Moses Lake. “There’s a need for educated workers to go into this.”</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; font-size: 13px; ">Holmquist Newbry helped sponsor the bill, but she also has a vested interest: Her husband is a student at Walla Walla, and the two hope to start a family winery after he’s finished.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; font-size: 13px; ">One day, their young son might want to study wine in college, she said.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; font-size: 13px; "><b>It’s OK in Oregon</b></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; font-size: 13px; ">In Walla Walla, home to a decade-old wine program with a national reputation, the prohibition on minors tasting wine “was a real barrier, particularly for farm families,” said Myles Anderson, director of the program of enology and viticulture at Walla Walla Community College.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; font-size: 13px; ">Students whose families owned farms wanted to enroll in the program so they could bring the knowledge back home to the farm, but “by the time they were 21, they decided to do other things,” Anderson said. He counts six students, all of them minors, who hope to join the enology and viticulture program this fall.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; font-size: 13px; ">Daigneault, from South Seattle Community College, hears from about a dozen students every quarter who’d like to take her classes. One student’s mother even called Daigneault, saying she had no problem with her 19-year-old tasting wine.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; font-size: 13px; ">“I said, well, that’s great, but it’s against the law,” Daigneault said.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; font-size: 13px; ">With this legislation, Washington catches up to neighboring Oregon, which already allows its 18- to 20-year-olds to take wine courses.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; font-size: 13px; ">Other states that allow minors to sample wine include Colorado and New York — but not California.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; font-size: 13px; ">The bill doesn’t extend to four-year schools — both Washington State University and Central Washington University offer courses in viticulture and enology — but Holmquist Newbry said the Legislature is likely to extend the law to include those schools during next year’s session.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; font-size: 13px; "><b>Culinary students, too</b></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; font-size: 13px; ">The prohibition against wine-tasting doesn’t just affect students who want to make wine. South Seattle’s growing, and very popular, culinary arts courses include a wine-pairing course to help students learn how to select the right wines to go with different foods.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; font-size: 13px; ">“A lot of our culinary students are doing internships abroad,” Daigneault said. “They’ll go to France, to a five-star establishment, and they know nothing about wine. And the expectation in Europe is, wine is another food component on the table.”</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; font-size: 13px; ">The legal drinking age in France is 18, and at home, European families have a relaxed attitude about teens sampling wine, she said.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; font-size: 13px; ">Sipping and spitting does mean that a student will absorb some alcohol on the palate, but Daigneault said she has her students eat crackers and drink water after every taste, which also helps cleanse and prepare the palate for the next glass. Most of the alcohol dissipates within 15 to 20 minutes, she said.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; font-size: 13px; ">In Walla Walla, the college’s enology and viticulture program requires students to try as many as 600 wines a year — 200 each quarter — from all over the world, Anderson said.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; font-size: 13px; ">Tasting 600 wines may sound like pure joy to a wine lover, but Walla Walla’s wine experts “dope” some of the wine with bad-tasting substances. That helps students recognize what went wrong when a wine fails to live up to its potential, or when it has turned bad.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; font-size: 13px; ">“We have some painful wines,” Anderson said.</p></div></blockquote></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; ">--------------------</div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; "><br></div><div style="text-align: -webkit-auto; "><span style="text-align: left; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">A student empties their spent wine samples into a bin during Reggie Daigneault's class at the Northwest Wine Academy at South Seattle Community College Tuesday May 14, 2013.</span></div><div style="text-align: -webkit-auto; "><span style="text-align: left; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="text-align: -webkit-auto; "><img src="cid:DE279936-A593-4A12-98DB-1691E1C21B22" alt="image.jpeg" id="DE279936-A593-4A12-98DB-1691E1C21B22" width="608" height="395"></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; "><br></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; ">-------------------------------------------</div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; "><br></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; ">I wonder how much they (<span style="text-align: left; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); ">South Seattle Community College)</span> charge for one of those after-class bins.</div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; "><br><div>Seeya at the Wingding, Moscow, because . . .</div><div><br></div><div>"Moscow Cares" (the most fun you can have with your pants on)</div><div><a href="http://www.MoscowCares.com">http://www.MoscowCares.com</a></div><div> </div><div><div>Tom Hansen</div><div>Moscow, Idaho</div><div><br></div><div>"<span style="font-size: medium; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); ">There's room at the top they are telling you still</span><span style="font-size: medium; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); "> </span></div><span style="font-size: medium; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); ">But first you must learn how to smile as you kill </span><br style="font-size: medium; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); "><span style="font-size: medium; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); ">If you want to be like the folks on the hill."</span></div><div><font size="3"><span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469);"><br></span></font></div><div><font size="3"><span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469);">- John Lennon<br></span></font><div> </div></div><div><br></div></div></body></html>