Wine Research & Podcasts

Good applied research underpins the profitability and success of agricultural industries, including wine industries, around the world. The UK wine industry is both small and young in comparison to other industries. While it behoves us to learn from other research being done in other wine regions, there is a role for local, contextualised research and development that is cognizant of our unique conditions and specialist products. 

An important component of any of our degrees at Plumpton is the research project. It allows the student some freedom and creativity and demonstrates an ability to independently develop research questions and conduct, analyse and report on the outcomes. Although these projects are necessarily short term, they can provide extremely useful insights and knowledge to industry. With all of these things in mind, Plumpton Wine Division hosted its inaugural Annual Industry Research Symposium on the 18th February 2022.

The UK’s centre of excellence in wine education, training, and research, selected ten recent graduates from across our three major courses to share their research and subsequent insights into the English and Welsh wine industry. From the other side, it is of benefit for our students to work on ‘industry relevant’ projects, so involvement of industry is critical for helping to identify viable research topics and, in fact, the whole process.

The research papers were delivered by the students and hosted by the program managers for BA (International Wine Business), BSc (Wine Production) and MSc (Viticulture and Oenology), in turn. At the end of each presentation, webinar guests were invited to ask questions and discuss implications.

Here are the student presentations: