Cal Poly Pomona earns awards for its first wine products

Cal Poly Pomona has many things to boast about and it just added another: Award-winning wines.

The University entered its Horsehill Vineyards Zinfandel Rosé and its Zinfandel, which are the first vintages Cal Poly has produced, in the Fairplex's 70th annual Los Angeles International Wine & Spirits Competition, the university announced Friday.

The competition took place at the end of May.

Cal Poly's Zinfandel Rosé earned a gold medal as Best of Class in the Best Rosé Limited Production category and its Zinfandel took a bronze medal in the category Limited Production Zinfandel from 2007 or Later.

The Zinfandel Rosé will be among the award-winning wines guest will be able to sample at tonight's Wine and Cars Under the Stars gala at the Wally Parks NHRA Motorsports Museum at Fairplex.

Horsehill Vineyards wines are produced with grapes cultivated by the University's College of Agriculture students, faculty and staff on three acres of Cal Poly land.

The vines that produced the grapes grew from award-winning cuttings, some more than 100 years old, local winemaker Don Galleano collected from the De Ambrogio Ranch in Rancho Cucamonga prior to the land being sold for development, the university statement said.

To produce the wine the University's Collins College of Hospitality Management and the College of Agriculture worked with master winemaker Jon McPherson of South Coast Winery in Temecula and produced 328 cases of the Zinfandel Rosé using two-thirds of the 2008 grape harvest.

The remaining third of the harvest produced 30 cases of Zinfandel that Galleano aged for six months in oak barrels at the Galleano Winery in Mira Loma.

The Zinfandel Rosé is sold exclusively at the Collins College's Restaurant at Kellogg Ranch. Plans call for the Zinfandel to sell at the restaurant in the fall.

The Zinfandel Rosé can be ordered by going to www.csupomona.edu/~horsehill with additional information available by e-mailing Lisa McPheron at lcmcpheron@csupomona.edu or calling (909) 869-3151.

Tickets to tonight's Wine and Cars Under the Stars gala,  which runs from 7 to 11 p.m., are still available and will be sold at the door for $100 each with proceeds benefitting Fairplex's Child Development Center, the Millard Sheets Center for the Arts and the Fairplex Education Foundation.