Wine industry has potential in Nebraska
The wine industry is labor intensive, but has considerable potential for Nebraska, according to Dr. Paul Read, the speaker at the banquet Friday night that concluded the combined conference of the Mari Sandoz Heritage Society and the Nebraska Statewide Arboretum at Chadron State College.
Read is a professor of horticulture and viticulture at UNL and heads the research that is being conducted on the best grapes to grow and other aspects of winemaking in the state. He said the state has the right conditions to grow good grapes for wine. Western Nebraska has some advantages over the eastern end of the state for growing the grapes because it has fewer fungus problems, he reported.
Nebraska has 21 licensed wineries and expects to have from two to five more in the next few years, he reported.
Wineries are not new to Nebraska, Read emphasized. In the early 1900s, up to 5,000 acres of grapes were grown in eastern Nebraska. But the passage of Prohibition in 1919 wiped out the industry. It wasn’t until the passage of the Nebraska Farm Wineries Act in 1985 that the industry was revitalized.
Read said wineries can stimulate the economy, particularly in small towns where winetasting is combined with other activities. He noted that there is no money made by merely growing the grapes. The money is made, by selling the wine. He said that if good wine is made and it is sold, at least $4,000 per acre can be grossed. Most wineries in Nebraska grow only a few acres of grapes.
Also during the banquet, the Spirit of Mari Sandoz Award was presented to Judy McDonald, now of Bemidji, Minn., the founder of the Mari Sandoz Heritage Society when she was a librarian at Chadron State College in the early 1970s.
Category: Campus News