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Feature Article from the June 2008 Magazine Issue
Beringer Alum and German Prof Honored
Robert Steinhauer
Steinhauer currently is president and part owner of Wineland Consulting LLC, with offices in Napa Valley and the Central Coast. He is perhaps best known for his 25-year career at Beringer Blass Wine Estates, where he was vineyard manager and senior vice president prior to his retirement in 2005. A Wines & Vines interview in 1999 marking his 20th anniversary with Beringer noted that during his tenure there, the winery's vineyard holdings had grown from 2,000 to more than 10,000 acres.
He has been a leader in the industry's move toward sustainable and organic growing practices. In the 1999 interview, he said: "I know that the future is organic. Our long-term goal is to go completely organic. In general, we are learning to be more sensitive to the environment.…It isn't just a sales or marketing goal, it's something that must be done for worker safety, consumer concern and to get along with our neighbors."
ASEV says Steinhauer is considered an expert in labor relations, technical practices and virtually every aspect of winegrape production, calling him "an invaluable asset to the industry."
Steinhauer has served the industry in many capacities, including board chairman of Napa Valley Vintners (2004), program committee chair from 2006-08 for the Unified Wine and Grape Symposium, chairman of the Pierce's Disease and Glassy-winged Sharpshooter board, and president of ASEV's board in 1985-86. A viticulture graduate of California State University, Fresno, he earned a master's degree in plant science there in 1967, and was named the university's 2006 Outstanding Alumnus.
No stranger to high honors, Steinhauer, along with his former Beringer colleague Ed Sbragia, was recognized as the San Francisco Chronicle Winemaker of the Year in 2001. In 2004 he was honored as Winegrower of the Year by Copia, Napa-based American Center for Wine, Food and the Arts. The Merit Award will be presented to Steinhauer at ASEV's general session June 19 at 9 a.m.
Winterhalter is on the Faculty of Chemistry and Pharmacy, Institute of Food Chemistry at the Technical University of Braunschweig, Germany, working with a research team focused on natural product chemistry and aroma research. With ASEV's emphasis on the sensory aspects of wine this year, Winterhalter is an apt choice to present the Honorary Research Lecture, entitled Application of Countercurrent Chromatography in Wine Research and Wine Analysis.
In a short abstract of the topic, Winterhalter wrote: "One of the few liquid chromatographic techniques that can be predictably scaled up from analytical to process scale is countercurrent chromatography (CCC).…This technique is ideally suited to the analysis of polar wine constituents."
In the first part of his lecture, Winterhalter will explain CCC instrumentation and its application to the analysis of labile aroma precursors, antioxidants and anthocyanins. In the latter part, he'll describe novel centrifugal precipitation chromatography for the fractionation of polymeric wine constituents, and describe the scale-up of the technique for separations in the 10-100 gram range.
Winterhalter has published approximately 180 scientific papers and three books. He'll present the Honorary Research Lecture on June 18 at 8:30 a.m.
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