Overflowing with Knowledge

Patricia Crosby Stefanowicz ’76 didn’t leave her career as an architect to pursue her passion in wine. Instead, she holds two professional identities. When this England-based Rice alum isn’t serving as an associate director for Healthcare Capital Projects Ltd., a management consulting firm that specializes in hospital construction, she’s knee-deep in wine. An occasional winemaker, importer and reseller, she also serves as a dissertation coordinator for the Institute of Masters of Wine, mentors budding masters of wine students and teaches wine classes at Plumpton College, a branch of the University of Brighton in East Sussex, and at the Wine and Spirit Education Trust in London. In addition, she writes for various European wine-related publications, contributed to the most recent edition of the Oxford Companion to Wine, is the chairwoman of the United Kingdom Vineyards Association annual wine competition and regularly sits on tasting panels.

“I have two curricula vitae,” says the super achieving mother of two. “I spend my working life 50/50 on each, or some might say 100/100, as I rarely do fewer than 50 hours a week in construction or 50 in wine.”

Like many love affairs, Stefanowicz’s passion for wine was the result of a chance encounter. She was working in Houston as an architect and engineer on medical projects when she was asked to design a winery for one of the company’s partners. “In Texas, we didn’t do winery architecture,” she explains. “But the partner decided that if the medical team could design laboratories, we ought to be able to design a winery.” She was available, so she got the assignment.

Stefanowicz spent 14 months in California managing the construction and became so captivated with the product that she decided to do a postgraduate certificate in viticulture and oenology at the University of California at Davis. For the next four years, she worked evenings and weekends selling, buying and educating for Houston Wines, formerly Wines of America. After moving to Europe with her husband, she continued her studies while employed as an architectural projects manager. She earned a diploma with honors from Plumpton College in 1993 and, that same year, won the Wine and Spirit Education Trust’s prestigious Rouyer Guillet Cup. Still not satisfied, Stefanowicz enrolled in the two-year program with the Institute of Masters of Wine. She was among five who graduated from her class of 40, and today she is one of fewer than 300 people worldwide who hold master of wine certification.