Washington – Drink up. It’s good for the American bottom line.
The U.S. wine-and-grape industry pours more than $162 billion annually into the nation’s economy, according to a first-of-its-kind study released Wednesday.
That counts jobs, sales, taxes and indirect benefits. California is the far-and-away leader, with 2,275 bonded wineries and 800,000 grape-planted acres, but it is a nationwide industry.
“This is something that reaches across all 50 states, and it’s tremendously important to those states,” said Democratic Rep. Mike Thompson, who represents California’s Napa Valley.
The study, commissioned by the wine industry and prepared by MKF Research, is the first to tally the wine-and-grape story in all states. Members of the wine-and-grape industry pay a total of $17.1 billion in state and federal taxes annually. About 1.1 million jobs nationwide rely on wine and grapes.
The Colorado Wine Board previously reported that Colorado’s 64 commercial wineries generated a retail value of more than $14 million in fiscal year 2005-06.
