Spotlight on Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and Allan Hancock College
By Damian J. Christian
OCWS funds scholarships for eight California colleges and universities, including Allan Hancock College (AHC) and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo (SLO). AHC offers multiple degrees and certificates in viticulture, enology, wine and food pairing, and wine business. The AHC viticulture & enology programs typically has over 100 majors per year and has a four-acre “practice” vineyard next to the college and additional vineyards in Los Alamos. Cal Poly San Luis Obispo has one of the largest enology and viticulture programs in the country and offers bachelor’s and master’s degrees in wine making and viticulture. Cal Poly-SLO will accept 77 new students this fall in these programs.
In May, I had the good fortune to attend the 2025 Scholarship Awards Ceremony at AHC. The OCWS scholarship has been distributed to one student with several others under consideration.
We met the current recipient, Mark Gabriele, who is a returning student very interested in making wine for this third career. He purchased a five-acre vineyard in the Cayucos Valley and recently added Syrah grapevines. He is attending AHC to learn how to care for his vineyard and make his own wine.
Recently, AHC Winery won a gold medal in the 2025 OC Fair Commercial Wine Competition for its 2023 Pinot Noir (90 points).
Also in May of this year, I visited Cal Poly-SLO for a reception and lunch with their enthusiastic scholarship recipients. The university awarded the OCWS scholarships to five students (listed below).
- Stella Dowd (not pictured)
- Phoebe Dueltgen
- Elizabeth Hastert
- Stella Tarantino
- Evelyn Tostado
Cal Poly-SLO has several dedicated wine making facilities. They have a 14-acre campus vineyard and as of 2019 have the Justin and J. Lohr Center for Wine and Viticulture. These include a 15,600 sq. foot-winery and space for grape crushing, fermentation, bottling and classrooms and teaching labs for the enology and viticulture courses. Students are given hands-on experience in all aspects of the wine industry.
Cal Poly SLO submitted several wines to the 2025 OC Fair Commercial Wine Competition and received gold medals for their 2022 Pinot Noir (92 points) and 2023 Chardonnay (90 points) and silver medals for three other wines.
Next month we will be highlighting another one of the colleges/universities supported by the OCWS Scholarship Fund. Just a friendly reminder there is always time to donate to the OCWS Scholarship Fund for 2025. There are two ways to donate:
- Mail a check – Make your check out to OCWS and mail it to the OCWS office at OCWS, P.O. Box 11059, Costa Mesa, CA 92627 Attn: Scholarship Fund. A donation letter will be sent to you.
- Donate Online – Logon to your account at ocws.org and go to the scholarship donation page: OCWS.org/product/scholarship-donations/.
You can make your donation online and print a receipt for tax purposes at the same time.