Anna Katharine MansfieldAnna Katharine Mansfield is an associate professor of enology at Cornell University, providing leadership in enology extension and research focused on wine quality and production efficiency. She is currently serving as a board director for both the ASEV National and the ASEV-Eastern Section – an ASEV first.

Anna Katharine has been a member of ASEV since 2000 and is actively involved as an AJEV reviewer, ASEV-ES Oenolympics chair, and ASEV-ES annual conference speaker and moderator.

Interestingly, her path to wine science was anything but conventional.

Mansfield was pursuing her undergraduate degree as an English major at Salem College in North Carolina, when the requirement that she complete an internship in another discipline landed her at a winery. She soon realized that she thoroughly enjoyed the work. After graduation, she applied to Virginia Tech, where she got her master’s degree in food science. This complete shift led her to pursue a doctorate degree in food science from the University of Minnesota, which ultimately brought her to a professional career in enology. But it was the summer before she started her fall semester at Virginia Tech, when her professor took her to an ASEV-ES meeting, that gave her the introduction and connections into the industry.

“I really credit the connections that I made at ASEV-ES for building a network,” says Mansfield.

“ASEV is the place in North America for connections. We are a relatively small group of academics, researchers and industry members, so it’s important for me to know what my colleagues are doing. Because enology and viticulture are so specialized, it is a great place for students to present their work because they get feedback and questions from people who specifically know their field, which wouldn’t happen at the American Chemical Society conference or other, more general scientific meetings. At ASEV, students can get very targeted feedback to their questions that can help them hone in on their research. It shaped my career.”

Even though Mansfield transitioned into science, she has found ways to incorporate her English background into her work.

“I love working in the industry and taking the science and making it into things that people can use – to  translate usable information on a day-to-day basis. I tend to work on applied projects that respond to the direct needs that we see in the industry. I also work with my students on science communication, infographics and other visual learning, and I’m always thinking of different ways to communicate information.

“About 10 years ago, we saw a need for students who attend the ASEV-ES annual meeting to interact more closely with each other and with the professors. In response, a couple of my colleagues and I put together the Oenolympics, a student competition designed to promote fun, fellowship, and creative thinking with enology- and viticulture-themed games. We do a blind tasting where we actually blindfold students and challenge them to identify wines without seeing them. I think this helped people relax and give them permission to be silly. Students often come in stressed about giving their presentations, and this helps them a lot – it allows them to be silly and have fun, and it humanizes professors, too.”

Mansfield’s current focus at Cornell University is helping regional wineries through enology extension, wine sensory evaluation, and research on hybrid wine phenolics and fermentation nutrition. She has seen her extension program network grow substantially in the last 10 years.

“Not only are we responsible for New York State, but we work with producers in New England and collaborate with the extension programs in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Virginia. We’ve developed a strong multi-institutional network and are working together to take care of the region,” says Mansfield.