{"id":4472,"date":"2023-09-07T19:47:51","date_gmt":"2023-09-07T19:47:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/graperesearch.org\/staging\/?p=4472"},"modified":"2023-10-30T20:54:34","modified_gmt":"2023-10-30T20:54:34","slug":"nominations-open-for-rich-smith-award-of-excellence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/graperesearch.org\/staging\/2023\/09\/07\/nominations-open-for-rich-smith-award-of-excellence\/","title":{"rendered":"The 2024 Rich Smith Award of Excellence"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nominations closed October 27, 2023
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Photo credit: Jenny Devine<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

<\/p>\n

Richard (Rich) Smith, founder of\u00a0Valley Farm Management,<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0Paraiso Vineyards and Smith Family Wines in California’s Santa Lucia Highlands wine region, was first and foremost a family man, and also a successful grape grower, winery owner and respected colleague.\u00a0He was a highly effective, collegial and tireless leader whose significant and selfless contributions of time, energy and funds helped to shape public policy and scientific research to advance the American grape and wine industry. He passed away in December 2015.<\/p>\n

Three of the organizations Rich helped to establish\u2014the National Grape Research Alliance<\/strong><\/a> (NGRA),\u00a0WineAmerica<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Winegrape Growers of America<\/strong><\/a> (WGA)\u2014annually join with the Smith Family to bestow the Rich Smith Award of Excellence. It recognizes an industry representative who exemplifies the passion, commitment and collaboration Rich was known for and who has had a similarly positive impact on the industry. For each organization, it is our highest and most coveted award.<\/p>\n

Nominate a colleague who emulates Rich’s exceptional leadership. (Nominees need not be a member of any of the three conferring organizations.) Nominations closed on\u00a0October 27, 2023. The 2024 Rich Smith Award recipient will be named at the WGA Leadership Luncheon<\/a><\/strong> on January 24, 2024, in Sacramento, CA.<\/p>\n

Past Rich Smith Award Winners\u00a0<\/strong>
\n2017 – John Martini,<\/strong> Anthony Road Wine Company<\/a>
\n2018 – Pete Downs,<\/strong> Family Winemakers of California<\/a>
\n2019 – Jerry Lohr,<\/strong> J. Lohr Vineyards & Wines<\/a>
\n2020 – Jim Trezise,<\/strong> WineAmerica<\/a>
\n2021 – Donniella (Donnie) Winchell,<\/strong> Ohio Wine Producers Association<\/a>
\n2022 – Thomas (Tom) Davenport,<\/strong> National Grape Cooperative (retired)<\/a>
\n2023 – Marty Clubb,<\/strong> L\u2019Ecole No 41<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nominations closed October 27, 2023<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-industry-news","category-ngwi-news"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/graperesearch.org\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/graperesearch.org\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/graperesearch.org\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graperesearch.org\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graperesearch.org\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4472"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/graperesearch.org\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4472\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4550,"href":"https:\/\/graperesearch.org\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4472\/revisions\/4550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/graperesearch.org\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graperesearch.org\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graperesearch.org\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}