The Tyree vineyard is located on Hopkins Road near the campus airport. Planting there started in 1975 and it replaced the Armstrong vineyard that was planted off of Old Davis Road. The Tyree vineyard is about 100 acres of teaching and research blocks. The teaching blocks are used to train students in how to identify wine, table, raisin and rootstock varieties, and to produce the grapes needed for the wine production courses. The research vineyard includes about 30 acres of grape breeding blocks dedicated to developing new varieties with resistance to Pierce’s disease, soil-borne pests (nematodes and phylloxera), drought and salinity, and powdery mildew. There is also a new 5-acre block designed to examine the impact of various irrigation regimes on the distribution and function of grape roots.
