Stony Brook Faces Funding Issues
Center for Wine, Food and Culture may follow in Copia's failed footsteps
Stony Brook University's Center for Wine, Food and Culture hosted last summer's highly successful symposium focused on cool and maritime climate winemaking.
PHOTOS: Olesya Medvedchikova
Long Island, N.Y. -- The implications of Gov. David Paterson's budget on the wine industry in New York continue to be the subject of debate within and beyond the state. Much of the controversy revolves around the sale of wine in grocery, convenience and drug stores, but there may be other significant consequences as well. One rumor recently making the rounds was that the Center for Wine, Food, and Culture at Stony Brook University on Long Island would be closed.
Summer on Long Island provided a warm welcome for international attendees at "The Art of Balance" symposium at Stony Brook last year.
PHOTOS: Olesya Medvedchikova
What is known is that, due to a budget crisis at the state level and within the State University of New York system, the center will become inactive following the current spring semester. Whether any portion of the program will continue has not been decided, and the final decision will be made at a later date by the president of the university. Louisa Hargrave, however, will no longer be the director of the center.
Starting in 2004, when the center was created as the result of a grant obtained by state Sen. Ken LaValle, wine tasting and food matching classes and special events have been held during the spring, summer and fall semesters at the three campus locations in Stony Brook, Southampton and Manhattan, N.Y. Several international conferences were held there, the largest one of them being the symposium "The Art of Balance: Cool Climate/Maritime Wines in a Global Context," which attracted approximately 600 people last August (see Sales Strategies for Cool Climate Wines). The center's potential demise echoes the recent bankruptcy of Napa's Copia center for wine, food and the arts, which abruptly closed Nov. 21.