Constellation prunes grape buys

Canandaigua, N.Y. — The word this week that Victor-based Constellation Brands Inc., the world’s largest wine producer, will cut its purchase of thousands of grapes over the next two harvests from local growers was alarming news to the organization that advocates for New York growers.

A group of growers has been in Albany meeting with legislators and officials of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration to advocate the sale of wine in New York grocery stores as a means to increase demand for grapes, New York State Wine Grape Growers said Monday. “There is of particular urgency this year because the state’s largest buyer of wine grapes has just informed its contracted growers that it will cut about 5,000 tons of grapes from its intended purchases over the next two harvests,” the organization said in a release Monday.

Jim Bedient, a grower from Yates County and former president of New York State Wine Grape Growers, said New York growers have a contract for 2011 with Constellation, the state’s largest buyer of wine grapes, for 25,000 tons. Constellation has continued to diminish its purchase of New York grapes in recent years, said Bedient. About 10 years ago, Constellation bought as much as 40,000 tons of New York grapes.

Calls to Constellation media relations were not immediately returned.

“The situation facing New York wine grape growers has reached a critical point,” stated NYSWGG President Don Tones, “and we need an immediate, major market expansion to solve the problem.”

A grower in the Finger Lakes region who has sold to Constellation for years under a contract, said Monday growers were warned earlier this year Constellation would be cutting its purchases of local grapes by about 15 percent for certain varieties.

He expected to know by the end of this month whether his varieties would be among those cut.

“There is a lot of spring work to be done,” said the grower, who wouldn’t identify himself for fear of repercussions. If he lost Constellation’s business, he couldn’t afford to prepare for another harvest, he said.

Tones said in a release Monday that “there have been cutbacks in grape purchases in some previous years as well, mirroring the continuing decline in the number of liquor stores which sell wine, from about 4,500 thirty years ago to only about 2,500, today to serve a population of 19 million people.

“While there has been significant growth in the number of new small wineries in New York State, their combined grape purchases are a very small amount of the total, and have also been affected by the difficult economy of the past few years.”

The NYSWGG formed nearly 50 years ago to protect and advance the interests of wine grape growers throughout the state, has advocated wine in grocery stores for decades.  Members of the organization joined colleagues from the New York Wine Industry Association, representing New York wineries, to push for the measure under the umbrella of New York Farm Bureau’s Lobby Days on Feb. 28 and March 1.