07/31/06 Latino Wine Education

Education for Latino wine growers. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. I have reported before on a new program to help educate Latino wine growers. That program is getting underway in earnest. Vicky Scharlau is the executive director of the Foundation who is over seeing the project. SCHARLAU: The Wenatchee Valley College has had a very successful program for their Hispanic Orchard Education Program for probably 10 or 12 years and the wine grape growers that also had tree fruit have really come to appreciate that whole program and came to us saying we should really do this for viticulture because it worked so well in tree fruit why can't we get a set of employees that have unique knowledge and that they can just learn more about how we grow premium quality wine grapes in Washington State. So we've been working with these two colleges for a couple of years now and we're taking the program, we're translating from tree fruit to viticulture. Classes will be held in Grandview, Washington. SCHARLAU: We're actually going to have the classes on site at the Grandview campus of the Yakima Valley Community College because that's where the core employees for the wine grape industry really exist. The cost for the class is $1500 but according to Sharlau they want as many people to take the class as possible. SCHARLAU: In many instances the funds for the class will in fact be paid by the employer. But in the event that the employer is not able to come up with that kind of money we do have scholarships available that we raised last year in anticipation of this years class. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.