Proud UC Davis Grads Made to Cow-er
By Alan Goldfarb
July 20, 2022
Along about now, alums of UC Davis – the Harvard of the wine industry – are having a cow. The reference, admittedly way too easy as you’ll see, goes to the geniuses at the school, who have decided that it would be far better to call themselves the Davis Cows. Aggies – officially the UC Davis Agricultures –was far too provincial and lacked pizzazz; Now it’s Go Fightin’ Cows, repel them, repel them, make them relinquish the oval. That’ll scare the grape juice out of ‘em.
So, there you have it. Now, all the Davis alums in Napa and Temecula will have to scrap those tees and sweatshirts and order new ones – We Make Cow Sense and You Can’t Cow Us, and We Don’t Cowtow to No One. Imagine all the dough rollin’ into the Davis bookstore, where the kid behind the counter tells me he can’t keep up with demand.
As a service to all my reader, I asked some Davis alums -- who are laying down hose and cleanin’ out the ole tanks and doing everything they learned at Good Ole Alma Mater – what they think about all the bull as they prepare for harvest. ‘Cause crush is just around the corner. You can’t herd cattle just like that, because that wasn’t part of the curricula when they took Oenology 1 (which I’m told will now have an optional course in milking. Kinda like pumping juice from one stainless pail into another).
Jed Jenkins (Class of ’00), the winemaker at Bovino Estates (I’m not makin’ that up), tells me when I try to milk him for a response to what he thinks of the mascot modification, in a kind of mooing tone utters, “Aggies Forever!” Way to be true to your school, Jeddo.
In yet another rejoinder, New Jersey winemaker Bossie (that’s her name, believe it or not, Class of ’74) Blevins, suggests that her old school tweak the name to Jersey Cows because well, she’s from there.
Finally, in my never-ending attempt to get to the bottom of the story – and to milk it for all its worth – Cowboy Jim Ropeshire, who owns an eponymous winery in Texas hill country – and is a 1999 graduate of Davis in viticulture with a minor in – you guessed it – calf roping, is incredulous at his school’s name change.
“If I had my way, I’d blow that building down,” he says from Hillabeans, Tex. “That’s because I’d a voted for Steers, long-horned ones at that. But they never consulted me. Oh hell, I don’t vote anyway.”
There you have it. Cows aren’t too popular with the alums out here. I guess you can rack it up (see what I did there?) to the generation gap. It’s like chewin’ cud – by the time it gets down to the third stomach, or is it four -- what comes out ain’t worth more than a heap o’ dung.