The Chronicle Express Asks “State unfair to New York Products?”
We don’t link to New York wine stories published by other publications very often, but this piece by John Christensen is more than deserving.
In the piece, Christensen starts off with some surprising news:
The New York State Department of Agriculture & Markets may be the organizers of the New York State Fair, but they seem to have forgotten that New York is in the wine business.
According to local sources attending the fair, the Empire Room, despite the hundreds of wineries in the Empire State, serves only one New York wine (from Glenora), yet offered several wines by Robert Mondavi – from California.”
As you can read in the full piece, Christensen didn’t have much luck when he contacted organizers and State organizations, trying to find out how this happened and why. But, not surprisingly, the Finger Lakes winery owners he spoke to had plenty to say:
David Whiting of Red Newt Cellars doesn’t mince words when he says, “It’s really stupid. The fair always could have been a better venue to feature New York wines. It’s a shame they can’t stand up for New York produce. That’s the purpose.”
Scott Osborn of Fox Run Vineyards was even more frustrated. “It is idiotic. Do they feature milk or cheese from Wisconsin? If you go to Burgundy in France, all the restaurants serve wines from Burgundy.”
Peter Martini of Anthony Road Wine Co. just shook his head, saying, “I don’t know why the fair has such a difficult time keeping its nose clean.”
I’d encourage you to read the full piece and voice your opinions here and with the Fair’s organizers.
This failure either highlights the complete ignorance, shameful indifference or perhaps just the general incompetence on all levels of state government, from legislature to appointed officials, spokespeople and marketing on the subject of what should be one of our highest agricultural priorities and pillar of revenue, the NYS wine industry. This would never happen in Virginia, where the industry has staunch supporters at the state level who realize the potential and value of that component. It’s unbelievable the state is spending the time and resources to redesign the faded I <3 NY campaign, scraping the bottom of the barrel (no pun intended) to jump start tourism when the answer is right here in front of their faces begging for another leg to stand on and funding it's own organizations out of pocket to do the work our state government should be chomping at the bit to get running. At the very least there is a fundamental lack of communication and education which is crippling us from promoting our own products within our own state borders.
Yowza! That’s really embarrassing. It’s got to make life tough for Harvey Reissig, who’s trying to get NY wineries to submit wines for the NY State Fair Competition. It’s one thing to take handouts and kickbacks and bribes, as the Ag and Markets high-level administrators seem to have a history doing (NOT Harvey), but another to do that AND give a food and beverage contract over to someone who’s clearly not competent. If you’re going to be evil, at least be smart enough to not do things that will just piss people off and draw attention to your evil.
Once again a severe disconnect between wine being an agricultural product. When I was young, I was in 4-H for 13 years. Every year I would pack up my veggies, arts, crafts, cattle up and spend my end of summer at the state fair representing local product. I’ve always had a sense of pride representing local product from my home farm. Now that I’m in the wine industry, I get a blank stare 90% of the time when I say, wine is an agricultural product. it saddens me that the Great New York state fair is unable to 100% support New York state product.