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Wine-And-Grape Business Feeds $3.3B to N.Y.

Posted on: Tuesday, 20 September 2005, 06:00 CDT

ROCHESTER, N.Y. - With 31,000 acres of vineyards and 212 wineries, New York's burgeoning wine-and-grape industry sends more than $3.3 billion rippling through the state's economy, a research firm says.

"The direct income from grape, grape juice and wine sales is just the beginning of the total economic impact the industry has on many sectors of the economy," said Barbara Insel, managing director of MKF Research in St. Helena, Calif. "There is a huge multiplier effect."

The preliminary, state-sponsored analysis, expected to be finalized in October, found that wineries, grape producers and related industries, from makers of bottles, glasses and labels to trucking, real estate and liquor stores, accounted for at least 23,250 jobs and a payroll of $786 million in 2004.

The total economic impact came to $3.34 billion, Insel said Monday, noting that "this figure should be viewed as conservative" because of the difficulty of gathering data on property taxes and on "allied industries." In addition, New York had an unusually small grape harvest last year.

"The quality and the seriousness of this industry just keeps getting bigger and bigger," Insel said. "In terms of numbers of wineries and employees, I have the sense it is where Napa probably was in the '80s."

New York churns out roughly 200 million bottles of wine each year, generating more than $1 billion in sales, and is the nation's third-largest wine producer behind California and Washington.

Helped by a 1976 state law that let wineries sell directly to anyone who visited their tasting rooms, the ranks of wineries from Long Island and the Hudson Valley across to Lake Erie multiplied from 19 in 1975 to 125 in the late 1990s.

That tally has soared over the last decade and could top 300 by 2008, predicted Jim Trezise, president of the New York Wine & Grape Foundation.

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On the Net:

New York Wine and Grape Foundation: http://www.newyorkwines.org

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TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) - Kansas has signed a trade agreement with Taiwan as part of a deal for U.S. beef producers to furnish beef hides.

The trade agreement calls for Taiwan to import up to 6 million hides from the U.S. in 2006 and 2007. The agreement signed Monday is worth about $420 million - nearly $130 million with Kansas alone.

Tsong-Ming Wang, deputy chairman of the Taiwan Regional Association of Tanneries, signed the agreement at the Kansas Statehouse along with Todd Johnson of the Kansas Beef Council.

Taiwan has been one the top oversees markets for Kansas farmers for decades. Since 1995, Taiwan has been the sixth-largest overseas market for American agricultural products and the third-largest market for U.S. cattle hides.

"They have been importing our hides for many years and they want to keep it going," Johnson said. "It shows good faith on their part by coming to the state and gain a better understanding of our process."

He said Taiwan's biggest need for hides is for making leather shoes.

Source: Associated Press/AP Online

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