$3 Million Gift to UC Davis for Sustainable Winery

DAVIS, Calif. — UC Davis announced a $3 million commitment made by Jesse Jackson and Barbara R. Banke of Jackson Family Wines to construct the Jess S. Jackson Sustainable Winery building. The new facility located within the university’s school for wine and food science.

 

The announcement was made by Neal Van Alfen, dean of the UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, at the opening ceremony of the new 34,000-square-foot teaching and research complex built within the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science.

 

The building, slated for completion in 2013, will include technology to “maximize the environmental capabilities of the adjacent new winery, brewery and food-processing complex,” according to a statement from the school. 

 

Aimed at becoming the first net-zero winery, the building includes technology to capture and sort out as much carbon dioxide as it produces in the winery’s fermentation, preventing damage to the atmosphere.

 

The sustainable winery building will allow instructors and researchers to demonstrate how a winery can operate on rainwater when it captures, filters and reuses that water multiple times, the statement said. The system will make it possible to reuse 90 percent of captured rainwater.

 

Plans for the facility will lead to the UC Davis winery, brewery and food-processing facility eventually operating independent of the main campus water supply.

 

The building will also include an automated system to clean barrels, tanks and fermenters, and rooftop photovoltaic cells to provide all of the facility’s power at peak load.

 

Further environmentally-conscious features include new food-processing equipment that minimizes energy and water requirements, use of recycled glass in the flooring, interior paneling recycled from a 1928 wooden aqueduct, and use of lumber harvested from sustainably certified forest operations.