WELCOME TO VITICULTURE AT SRJC!
When you experience your first Viticulture class at Santa Rosa Junior College, you'll become part of Sonoma County's #1 agricultural industry! The stellar reputation of SRJC's Viticulture Program is well known throughout Sonoma County and California, so students can feel confident that they are building their careers on an outstanding tradition.
QUALITY INSTRUCTION
SRJC's staff and faculty continually strive for excellence in agriculture education, so students can be sure that the instruction is provided by top notch experts in the field. Students have many opportunities to meet with and learn from local wine grape industry professionals, as well as visiting diverse vineyards in Sonoma County's appellations, the different geographical grape growing regions that produce distinctive wine grape qualities.
Touring beautiful local vineyards is always a special treat for students. The Sonoma County wine industry as a whole offers experience and expertise to the students in the classroom; in fact, SRJC's viticulture instructors are all wine grape industry professionals. While most classes are held at Shone Farm, some are scheduled on SRJC's main campus in Santa Rosa.
SHONE FARM
SRJC Viticulture students learn by actively pursuing their education and training at SRJC's beautiful 365-acre Shone Farm situated on the Russian River near Forestville. Located in the heart of Sonoma County's wine grape industry and offering quality instruction in traditional classrooms and in the field, Shone Farm is literally an outdoor field laboratory for year-round, hands-on learning. Students also greatly benefit by visiting and learning from growers and managers in the field and from local viticulture experts.
Shone Farm includes the Warren G. Dutton Jr., Agricultural Pavilion, which houses the Shone Farm Winery where students can learn firsthand how grapes are processed into wine. In addition to the production vineyard blocks, a new teaching block planted with many different varieties of grapes will help students learn to identify the various varieties of wine grapes. Hands-on instruction is provided on approximately 90 acres of wine grapes that are commercially farmed and sold to several of Sonoma County's top wineries. There is also one acre student block that is exclusively for viticulture students to work in, pruning, training and harvesting vines. This block is also a cultivar and rootstock identification block with 54 cultivars and 14 rootstocks.
