State’s Vintners Toast a Recent Boost in Tourism
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
ROCHESTER, N.Y. – Wineries in New York are drawing nearly three times as many visitors as a decade ago, making the wine industry the fastest growing sector in agriculture and tourism – the state’s two biggest economic engines.
Of the 219 wineries that have sprouted from Long Island across to Lake Erie – there were only 19 in 1976 – each one had an average of 54% more visitors in 2003 than it did three years earlier, according to the latest survey by the New York Agricultural Statistics Service.
The typical winery more than doubled its tasting-room sales, with each visitor spending 49% more on average than in 2000, the agency said.
The throng of tourists will likely swell to more than 3 million this year, up from an estimated 2.5 million in recent years, the New York Wine & Grape Foundation’s president, Jim Trezise, said yesterday.
“We have had an equal number of winery startups in the first five years of this decade as we had in the whole decade previously, so we’ve doubled the growth rate,” Mr. Trezise said. “I would say that probably we will have over 300 wineries statewide within two or three years.”
It’s been especially energetic in the Finger Lakes – 10,000 acres of vineyards encircling four of the 11 fjordlike lakes in west-central New York.
The tourist influx is spawning dozens of bed-and-breakfasts and upscale restaurants and a burgeoning array of antique and gift stores, farm and craft markets, and festivals.
“There’s a huge multiplier effect from wine-industry growth, not only in tourism but in manufacturing because you have to have tanks and barrels, bottles and labels and corks and everything else,” Mr. Trezise said.
A long-awaited state law allowing the direct shipment of wines into and out of New York went into effect August 11. Many New York vintners think the potential for sales growth nationally exceeds the risk that the local market may turn more toward wines from other states.
New York churns out about 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.
The survey recorded an estimated 4.14 million “person visits” to New York wineries in 2003, up from 1.44 million in 1993 and 384,000 in 1985.
