Horsehill Vineyards Wins Medals

Cal Poly Pomona’s Horsehill Vineyards won silver and bronze medals at the 81st Annual Los Angeles International Wine Competition.

The vineyard’s 2017 wine took home the bronze medal in the Zinfandel category.

The wine also won a silver medal in the Packaging Design: Color & Type category. Honorees in this category were selected for their clean, simple, and striking use of color and typography elements to carry the package design.

Students from the College of Environmental Design competed to create the label used on the Horsehill Vineyard wine.

The award-winning wines were displayed at the LA County Fair in May. More than 1,250 wines from 15 different countries were entered into this year’s competition.

It was the first time the competition was held after a two-year hiatus caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Horsehill Vineyards is a partnership of The Don B. Huntley College of Agriculture, The Collins College of Hospitality Management, and South Coast Winery in Temecula, Calif.

The Zinfandel grapes are grown at the university’s on-campus vineyards with Huntley College of Agriculture students involved in all aspects of grape production and harvesting.

The vineyards were started with cuttings, some of them nearly 100 years old, from the De Ambrogio Ranch vineyard in Rancho Cucamonga before it was razed. The ranch was part of the Cucamonga Valley’s grape-growing history, which dates back to the mid-1800s.

The wine is bottled and produced by South Coast Winery and then delivered to Cal Poly Pomona to be marketed and sold by Collins College of Hospitality Management students and the Farm Store at Kellogg Ranch.

It’s the latest honor that Horsehill Vineyards wine has earned.

Among the nearly dozen awards it has received include a Best of Class Gold Medal for its 2008 Rosé and gold medals for its 2009 Zinfandel Rosé and 2016 Zinfandel Rosé, all from the Los Angeles International Wine Competition.