Move over, soybeans!
“I will make as much selling grape plants off of two acres this year as I did many years on 1,000 acres of corn and raising 3,000 head of hogs,” said Stan Olson in today’s NYT. Olson used to grow corn and soybeans on hundreds of acres in Iowa west of Des Moines. Now he supplies many of the state’s 70 wineries with vine cuttings.
I observed a similar shift in Walla Walla, Washington earlier this year. There, one apple grower had uprooted some of his orchard to plant grapes. Even though apples had a higher profit per acre at the farm gate, with the added value of making wine, grapes were the winner.
And then there’s the tourism, which is even being felt in Iowa according to today’s NYT story.
Summerset [Iowa] has also become a tourist destination, with concerts on the weekends, themed parties and grape-stomps that draw thousands. Tourists will actually pay for the privilege to stomp grapes.
With growing demand from wine consumers, producers are popping up at a staggering rate. In Iowa, there were 15 wineries in 2000, which represents a growth rate akin to an internet stock to reach the current 70. However, they join an already-crowded field that is oversupplied with wine. But they have an edge that non-descript wine from California doesn’t have: they’re local. And that seems to go down easy.
tags: wine | iowa | american wine
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On November 19th, 2006 at 1:25 pm ,GollyGumDrops wrote:
I can’t imagine I’ll find wine from Iowa in Europe anytime soon, but I’ll look out for it next time I’m in Michigan.