FIU professor reaches out to China (and blogs about it)

The Chinese are known for their sweet plum wine and for a dozen excellent brands of beer. But when it comes to fine wine? Well, network TV coverage of last year's Olympics in Beijing indicated that, since the Chinese prefer their drinks sweet, they were cutting expensive Bordeaux and other dry Western wines with Coca-Cola.

Good luck, Barry.

Readers, you can come along for the ride. For the next three weeks, Gump will share his experiences on my blog, Wine Beneath the Palms, at MiamiHerald.com/wine, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. His first report is already posted, so check it out.

In China, Gump will teach students at FIU's School of Hospitality and Tourism Management program in Tianjin, China. The $50-million, 23-acre campus, paid for by the Chinese government, is aimed at educating employees for big, Western-style hotels and restaurants.

From Gump's first missive: ``I saw some billboards on the way here advertising wine, so there does seem to be some interest in the beverage. The school has a reasonable wine library [bottles of various wines] here, so I will be able to provide examples of various varietals and wine styles. As soon as I can make arrangements to get to a grocery store, I will try to find some Chinese wines and will let you know what I think about them.''

Back at FIU, Gump took five of his master's degree students to the ultra-modern Schnebly winery near Homestead to taste and bottle wines they made from merlot grapes he had shipped in from California's Lake County. They showed off those wines -- and some beer they made -- at February's South Beach Wine & Food Festival.

In China, classes are taught in English by FIU-educated Chinese professors as well as teachers from FIU's Miami campus. Each fall semester, a dozen American FIU students study in China. And Chinese students who get undergraduate degrees in Tianjin come to Miami to pursue master's degrees.

The school graduated its first 29 students in 2008, and many of them worked for last year's Olympics.

Gump comes at wine from the scientific side, having a Ph.D. in analytical chemistry from UCLA. He recently retired as a professor of chemistry and adjunct professor of Enology at California State University, Fresno. He teaches wine components and analysis classes.

He came to FIU in 2007 as the first Harvey R. Chaplin Eminent Scholar's Chair in Beverage Management at the university's School of Hospitality and Tourism Management.