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February 2018 WINES&VINES 21 WINE INDUSTRY NEWS Kaz Winery, and Nick Buttitta of Rosa d'Oro Vineyards. Napa Vintners elect officers The board of directors of the Napa Valley Vintners elected David Pear- son, chief executive officer of Opus One, as its chair for 2018. Robin Baggett, owner and managing part- ner of Alpha Omega, was elected vice-chair, and Delia Viader, owner and founding winemaker for Viader Vineyards & Winery, was named treasurer and secretary. Lohr named 'Person of the Year' Steve Lohr, CEO of J. Lohr Vine- yards & Wines, was named the 2017 Paso Robles Wine Industry Person of the Year. Lohr received the award at the Paso Robles Wine Country Alliance's annual meeting in honor of his leadership and promotion of the region. Lohr is the son of J. Lohr Vineyards & Wines founder Jerry Lohr and was named CEO in 2013. During his tenure, Lohr has helped build one of California's largest estate wine programs, spanning more than 3,700 sustainably certified acres, including more than 2,300 acres in Paso Robles. SSU awards scholarships The Wine Business Institute at So- noma State University in Rohnert Park announced the first group of 15 students to each receive $10,000 scholarships as part of the Wine Industry Scholars Program. The scholarships are intended to support the access, retention and graduation of first- generation university students from the families of vineyard and winery workers. New VP of sales for Foley Ryan Martin is the new vice presi- dent of national sales and analytics for Foley Family Wines in Santa Rosa. Martin spent the previous 20 years at E. & J. Gallo Winery, where he held sales and marketing roles of increasing responsibility including distributor management, sales strategy, brand marketing and shopper marketing. Most recently, Martin held the title na- tional director of on-premise sales. Martin's primary responsibilities in his new role will include overseeing national on-premise sales across the United States. NORTHWEST Ancient Lake to offer custom bottling Ancient Lake Wine Co. in George, Wash., has installed a new bottling line and is offering contract bot- tling to wineries in the area. The winery, owned by Jerry Milbrandt, will be able to bottle more than 2 million cases per year in the 60,000-square-foot facility. The company is also planning to add more fermentation tanks to increase total production capacity as well as expand barrel-storage space. Former packing house to be used for wine storage A 4.6-acre property that was the home of a fruit-packing operation and has been vacant for a decade will be redeveloped into cold stor- age and warehouse for wineries in the Naramata Bench area of Brit- ish Columbia's Okanagan Valley. Laughing Stock Vineyards founder and winemaker David Enns and partners Mik Ball, Robert Gritten and Steven Jaeger plan to up- grade the building's electrical and climate-control systems as well as the building's façade. Construction is expected to begin in spring of this year. CENTRAL Wedding Oak hires assistant winemaker Seth Urbanek is the new assistant Seth Urbanek