PULLMAN – Chas W. Nagel, a California wine country native whose scientific research was instrumental in developing Washington state’s premium wine industry, is dead at age 81.
Nagel, a Washington State University scientist for about three decades, died Thursday in Pullman after a long illness, according to a news release from the school.
By working to teach growers in the state how to make and taste high-end wines, Nagel helped build Washington into a premiere wine-producing region, second only to California in U.S. premium wine production.
Nagel’s research on the chemical composition of Washington wines helped identify which grapes could most successfully be grown in the state, and his studies on fermentation research led to production of more complex wines, said Mike Wallace of Prosser, who started Hinzerling Vineyards in 1976.
“He was an expert at managing acidity in wine,” Wallace said.
Nagel was born in 1926 in St. Helena, Calif., the son of a Napa Valley grape grower, and worked as an Army bacteriologist at the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah after graduating from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1950.
Nagel earned a doctorate in microbiology at the University of California-Davis, in 1960, the year he came to Washington State as an assistant professor of horticulture.
In 1964 he began forming wine tasting panels to evaluate the results produced researchers at the university.
Nagel left in 1971 to become director of research for United Vintners Inc. in Asti, Calif., then returned in 1973 as a professor and food scientist. He retired in 1992.
Survivors include his wife, Beatrice sons Robert of Pullman and William of Henderson, Nev., and daughters Kathy Deuel of Steilacoom, Trish Niehl of University Place and Liza Nagel of Albuquerque, N.M. Services were scheduled Wednesday at St. Thomas Moore Chapel in Pullman.
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