A brilliant idea

Today's reprint is from Oct. 12, 2007.

A special interest group called the Pennsylvania Winery Assn. has advanced a proposal for the state to contribute $500,000 a year to it for the next four years, or $2 million, from the general fund, to subsidize a research and marketing campaign so that its member wineries can thrive, according to an article in the Erie Times-News.

The state already contributes $100,000 to the PWA. But that’s not enough, says North East grape grower and vintner Mario Mazza. “We are asking for something we actually can do something with.”Besides Mazza, the article quotes a spokesperson for the PWA, and two other affluent local winemakers and/or sellers, Doug Morehead and Tim Burch.

The spokesperson, Jennifer Eckinger told a local reporter the number of wineries in Pennsylvania has doubled in the past five years, and could double again with “improved grapes” and a “bigger market.” If the statewide industry doubled between 2002 and 2007 without a $2 million handout, the obvious question is, why can’t it double again without one?

Morehead, a second generation grape grower and vintner, told the reporter: "New York state's investment in the grape and wine industry has provided a return that would make Wall Street green with envv. Research is critical," Morehead said. The $2 million state grant “ would improve our wines and it would definitely speed up the growth we are seeing right now.”And, of course, further enrich them.

If a $2 million research and marketing effort is, as Morehead put it, “critical” to the growth of the state’s wine industry, why shouldn’t the winery owners themselves shell out what they say would equate to 10 cents for every gallon of wine produced, rather than seek a state subsidy?That way, if they like, the wineries could pass on the cost to wine consumers, rather than to the general population, most of whom don’t drink wine, Pennsylvania’s or any other’s.

Burch is quoted as saying: "It would be great if we could get this through. It would do us all a lot of good." Sounds like General Motors talking. Both my grandparents struggled through the Great Depression here in North East before their grape farms prospered during the 1940s and beyond.

The main reason they prospered stemmed not from any state government handout, but from a novel and brilliant idea a shrewd fellow by the name of Jack Kaplan hatched in the early 1950s when he haltingly organized grape farmers into an entity called the National Grape Cooperative.

It enabled them to control their own crop prices and destinies through a marketing arm known as the Welch Grape Juice Co., now Welch Foods, wowing the city slickers down on Wall Street. Doug Morehead’s father was a towering figure in that effort.

If the wineries deserve a state subsidy, why not the men’s store down the street, or the barber shop on the corner, or the hardware store down in the valley, or the restaurant off I-90, or the women’s boutique on Main Street, or the antique shop in the alley, or the book dealer in the strip mall, etc., etc?The Pennsylvania Winery Assn. doesn’t need a $2 million state subsidy to grow its industry. What it needs is a brilliant idea.