The complex gives Napa Valley College’s Viticulture and Winery Technology program a home equal to its role in the Valley’s workforce. It brings wine science, sensory evaluation, wine marketing and sales, and hospitality training together in one connected campus gateway. It more than doubles the program’s classroom and lab capacity. The program serves roughly 800 to 1,000 students a year, and more than 80% of graduates go on to wine-industry jobs.
Wine Spectator Wine Education Center and Donna Altes Hospitality Training Center at Napa Valley College
Project builder: Midstate Construction Corporation
Project owner: Napa Valley College
Project architect: Carl Servais of TLCD Architecture
Landscape architect: RHAA Landscape Architecture & Planning
Civil engineer: Brelje & Race Consulting Engineers
Structural engineer: ZFA Structural Engineers
Electrical engineer: O’Mahony & Myer, Inc.
TLCD Architecture designed the complex around a winery aesthetic: vertical fiber cement panels, tall glazing under shed roofs, and warm wood soffits. A covered breezeway joins the two phases into a single portal to a shared plaza. The buildings were sited to preserve a mature oak, which now shades the quad. Inside are two sensory classrooms that combine through retractable partitions into the campus’s largest room at 80 seats, and a 28-station wine science lab. The building is all-electric, with rooftop solar and battery storage.
The complex is built to feed Napa County’s wine and hospitality economy, where hospitality alone is projected to add about 2,272 jobs by 2028. It gives working adults, career-changers and first-generation students a path into that industry, with evening and weekend options. It was funded privately, led by a $10 million gift from the Wine Spectator Scholarship Foundation, the largest in the college’s history, with support from the Evelyn Allen estate and other donors.
Project descriptions are provided by nominators and surveys of winners and have been edited for length and clarity by North Bay Business Journal.
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