20110722

NY approves farm wineries changes

ALBANY, NY -- Governor Andrew Cuomo today signed into law a bill he said will reduce regulatory burdens the State Liquor Authority places on farm wineries.

“This bill is a huge boost for wineries across the state. Reducing the regulatory burdens on farm wineries will allow them to continue to thrive as a key tourism, agricultural, and economic engine for our state,” Cuomo said in a statement.

The law implements several recommendations the New York State Wine Grape Task Force made in its 2008 report to the commissioner of the state Department of Agriculture and Markets. Among its main points:

• Allow farm wineries to operate up to five branch stores without having to obtain separate licenses or being subject to the same off-premise restrictions that liquor stores have under existing state law. The branch stores will be considered extensions of the winery and not separate entities.

• Make clear that farm wineries can provide or use custom-crush services for buyers of New York grapes, making it easier for small vineyards to enter the industry.
Permit the wineries to maintain their direct-shipping reports on site and only provide them to the Liquor Authority when asked to, rather than having to produce time-consuming reports for the state.

• No longer require wineries that manufacture less than 1,500 gallons of wine a year to apply for separate micr0-winery licenses. All farm wineries will have the same license, and micro-winery licenses will continue to cost $50 a year.

 • Lift a restriction that limits wineries’ participation in charitable events to five a year. Wineries will obtain annual permits and notify the Liquor Authority of events.

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Here's the lowdown on Idaho's wine scene

From the Idaho Statesman:

Exciting things are happening in Idaho wine. The establishment of Idaho’s first American Viticultural Area in 2007 was a big step in elevating the wines of Idaho onto the national and international stage.

An AVA is a defined area for wine (grape) growing, such as the Napa Valley or Walla Walla. The Snake River Valley has been recognized as having unique characteristics and has been legally defined. The AVA is large, more than 5 million acres, stretching from Ontario, OR, nearly to Twin Falls. That makes it the fifth largest AVA in the country.

By comparison, Washington’s Columbia Valley is more than 11 million acres, Oregon’s Willamette Valley is just more than 3 million, and the Napa Valley is 225,000.

An AVA is defined by specific climactic and geographic characteristics. The Snake River Valley AVA is the area that was covered by a prehistoric lake that once existed over much of southern Idaho. That lake was responsible for forming the subsoil upon which we live. The consistency of elevation, soil, and climate means that, in theory, wines grown in the Snake River Valley will have a unique character.

Several winemakers are now lobbying for the creation of sub-AVAs which will further designate the difference between the more volcanic soil surrounding Craters of the Moon and the more sandy soil of Canyon County.

[Go here for the full story.}


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Illegal rice wine popular in NYC Chinatown

From The New York Times

NEW YORK -- The restaurant looks like so many others in the roiling heart of Chinatown, in Lower Manhattan: a garish sign in Chinese and English, slapdash photos of featured dishes taped to the windows, and extended Chinese families crowding around tables, digging into communal plates of steamed fish, fried tofu and sautéed watercress.

But ask a waitress the right question and she will disappear into the back, returning with shot glasses and something not on the menu: a suspiciously unmarked plastic container containing a reddish liquid.

It is homemade rice wine -- "Chinatown’s best," the restaurant owner asserts. It also is illegal.

In the city’s Chinese enclaves, there is a booming black market for homemade rice wine, representing one of the more curious outbreaks of bootlegging in the city since Prohibition. The growth reflects a stark change in the longstanding pattern of immigration from China.

In recent years, as immigration from the coastal province of Fujian has surged, the Fujianese population has come to dominate the Chinatowns of Lower Manhattan and Sunset Park, Brooklyn, and has increased rapidly in other Chinese enclaves like the one in Flushing, Queens.

These newcomers have brought with them a robust tradition of making -- and hawking -- homemade rice wine. In these Fujianese neighborhoods, right under the noses of the authorities, restaurateurs brew rice wine in their kitchens and sell it proudly to customers. Vendors openly sell it on street corners, and quart-size containers of it are stacked in plain view in grocery store refrigerators, alongside other delicacies like jellyfish and duck eggs.

The sale of homemade rice wine -- which is typically between 10 and 18% alcohol, about the same as wine from grapes -- violates a host of local, state and federal laws that govern the commercial production and sale of alcohol, but the authorities have apparently not cracked down on it.

A spokesman for the New York State Liquor Authority said the agency had recently received complaints about illegal Chinese rice wine and was looking into them, though he offered no further details. New York police officials said the department had never investigated the trade.

[Go here for the full story.]

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Aussie wine mishap delays U.S. debut

From The Associated Press

ADELAIDE, Australia -- An unsteady forklift dropped a container full of fine Australian wine worth more than $1 million, smashing most of the bottles. The winemaker says he is "gut-wrenched, shocked and numb" after the loss of his flagship shiraz.

Sparky Marquis of Mollydooker Wines lost a third of his Velvet Glove Shiraz production after the accident that destroyed all but one of the 462 cases bound for the United States. Each bottle of the Mollydooker wine sells for $200.

Marquis said Friday that when workers opened up the dropped container, "It was like a murder scene. There was red everywhere."

He said the wine was fully insured. The accident has crippled Mollydooker's U.S. launch in September. It will also impact the wine market in Australia.

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20110719

Psst! Vermont has a wine industry

Go here for an interactive version of the map.
From the Brattleboro Reformer

HALIFAX, VT -- Vermont’s growing wine industry is banking on a new consumer-focused program to bring more visitors to the vineyards and tasting rooms across the state.

The Vermont Grape and Wine Council announced last month the creation of a passport program that will include more than 20 locations. The move is part of a greater effort to increase the awareness of Green Mountain wines.

Visiting a winery or tasting rooms will result in a stamp for the consumer. Completing a form with 10 or more stamps and the customer is eligible for a variety of prizes, including a vacation getaway or basket stuffed with Vermont products.

"Guests come to the winery, they pick up a map of the state of Vermont. And on that map, it lists all the different wineries all over the state," said Lorraine Muha of the Honora Winery & Vineyard Tasting Room in Jacksonville. "When you go to each winery, they each have a stamp that shows that you have been to that particular winery."

Bob Foley of Neshobe River Winery in Brandon, a board member with the council, said the program is designed to promote the industry itself first, and hopefully an increase in sales will follow.

"A lot of folks do not know we have a grape industry in Vermont," he said.

Many of the state’s wineries started small by selling at farmers’ markets, local grocery stores and Vermont liquor outlets. The industry has made valiant attempts to expand its customer-base through festivals and an open house weekend last August.

[Go here for the full story.]

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20110705

Brotherhood launches new steel wine kegs

Signature orange-capped steel kegs.
WASHINGTONVILLE, NY -- Brotherhood Winery is peddling more than wine these days. The nation's oldest winery has come up with a new 20-liter stainless steel wine container it hopes will tap into the growing keg wine sales niche.

The "Brotherhood Winery Wine Keg" is a modification of a design from a decade ago that did not catch on. Rather than using metals that reacted with the wine, creating the signature "rotten egg" smell of hydrogen sulfide, as before, Brotherhood now uses only non-reactive stainless steel for every part of the keg that touches the wine.

The kegs purportedly will preserve the fresh taste of the wine up to two years. Cooling coils in the kegs holding white wine will allow the wine to be served chilled from the tap.

Oak Beverages, a Rockland County wholesale beer distributor, will distribute the kegs statewide. Arrangements are in the works for a Midwest distributor.

Cesar Baeza, Brotherhood co-owner, says the company is hoping to expand from wine-on-tap kegs for restaurants and special event facilities to local beer retailers where individual customers could get refills or replacements of the 20-liter kegs.

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20110703

New tax break for Virginia farm wineries

RICHMOND, VA -- The commonwealth's farm wineries now are eligible to get a tax credit for part of the cost of new or upgraded equipment.

The General Assembly approved a state corporate income tax credit available starting in the current tax year. It allows farm wineries and vineyards to get credit for up to 25% of the cost of certain equipment and materials -- from barrels to fertilizer, for example. The credit is capped at $250,000 a year.

Ann Heidig of Lake Anna Winery is president of the Virginia Wineries Association. She told the Fredericksburg Freelance-Star that even such a small tax change is helpful because it can cost up to $15,000 to put in just one new acre of vines and small business loans are difficult to obtain.

"Any help on the part of the government is really a value added to us and to the government," she said.

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Fading image of the French wine drinker

The French have long had a global reputation for drinking wine day and night, beginning with children being started with watered-down versions, then continuing to imbibe throughout life.

Well, that no longer is true.

Just 16.5% of the French population now now regular wine drinkers, according to the latest survey from the ESC Pau research center and Toulouse 1 Capitole University. French wine consumption has dropped the equivalent of one bottle per adult each week in two generations.

Regular consumption over meals has been replaced by the French drinking wine occasionally rather than frequently, often on nights out, a pattern of behavior that has developed over the past two generations.

In their study published in the International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business, Pascal Poutet and Thierry Lorey looked at successive generations and their approach to wine drinking, dividing the demographic into four groups.

The oldest was those over 65 years who had lived through the World War II, followed by those between 40 and 65 who lived through a period of growth and worldwide development.

Those 30 to 40 -- "Generation X" -- who grew up through the French economic and political crises of the 1990s, were next, followed by those under 30 -- the Internet generation.

"Each successive generation represents a general increase in libertarian attitudes and irreverence towards institutions," Poluet said.

It is the over-65s who most linked wine consumption with French heritage and were more likely to drink it daily and share the experience. The middle groups are much more occasional drinkers and drink more socially with friends rather than family, and social status is a factor in their wine consumption. For the under-30s, wine consumption is very much the exception rather than the rule.

"There is a dual gap between the three generations, older, middle-aged, younger -- on the one hand, the consumption frequency gap (from a daily wine consumption to a festive one, and then exceptional), on the other, the pleasure gap," evolution from a genuine pleasure towards a more ostentatious pleasure, more difficult to perceive for the younger generation, according to Poulet."

The younger generations may still take pride in French wine but have little awareness of its cultural place in French history, he said.

"It is precisely the progressive loss of the identity, sacred and imaginary representations of wine over three generations that explains France’s global consumption attitudes, and especially the steep decline in the volumes of wine consumed."

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Kentucky school expands vineyard project


BOWLING GREEN, KY -- In a state widely known for producing whiskey, Western Kentucky University is expanding its vineyard program.

A newly planted vineyard is the third on the WKU Farm. The first two were established in 2008 and 2009. One vineyard is used for education in the university's viticulture courses and for community workshops and tours; the second vineyard is used for research. The new vineyard will be used for wine production when the vines begin producing grapes in three to four years.

Before Prohibition, Kentucky was the third largest grape- and wine-producing state in the country. A resurgent interest in viniculture now has more than 100 Kentucky farmers growing grapes.

[Go here for a full report on the WKU project.]

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