A new proposal to sell wine in New York supermarkets is surfacing in Albany after liquor store interests helped kill an earlier bill.
But Democratic Assemblyman Joseph Morelle of Monroe County is proposing additional elements to the bill that would address long-standing concerns of liquor store owners worried that selling wine in supermarkets would kill their businesses.
Grocery store chains that want to legalize wine sales in their stores say it will add $160 million in revenues to the state in the first two years and save New Yorkers $80 million in lower prices through greater competition. Advocates also claim the law would add 2,000 jobs and help New York wineries.
But liquor store owners fear the measure would drive out one of the state's last vestiges of mom-and-pop retail. And some winery owners fear sales of wine in the state's 16,000-plus grocery stores would cut into their business because better-known wines from California, Europe and Australia would crowd them out.
"The big winners will be the Gallos and Yellow Tails and Mondavis and Kendall-Jacksons, all the big brands," said Art Hunt, whose winery overlooks Keuka Lake, another picturesque spot in one of the nation's oldest grape regions. "I don't think more than a dozen New York wineries would benefit very much."
In his budget for fiscal 2010 - which begins next week - Paterson has proposed raising wine tariffs to increase state revenue directly. He also wants to let bodegas, supermarkets and big-box outlets like Wal-Mart buy wine licenses in the hope of increasing overall sales.
Similar proposals have fizzled in Kentucky and Colorado and resurfaced in Tennessee and Oklahoma over the last year, according to the Wine Institute, a trade group in San Francisco. No state has changed course to let food stores carry wine since Iowa did in 1983.
But expanding wine franchises has helped the industry thrive in Washington, Oregon and California, by far the nation's largest wine-growing state, Osborn and others argue.
Even with heavy restrictions, New York's wine industry has grown from 21 wineries in 1975 to 261 this year, and supporters of changing the laws say it could grow much more, given the Finger Lakes region's fabled microclimate, which is ideal for growing cool-climate grapes.
With the exception of wine coolers - low-alcohol beverages made from wine and fruit juice that surged in popularity in the 1980s - wine sales in New York have been limited since the 21st Amendment repealed Prohibition in 1933 to wineries and liquor shops, now including a handful of stores that sell only wine.
