Good News from Indiana


• By Allen Dale "Ole" Olson   |   Monday, December 7, 2009 at 4:23 pm   |     |   Print   |   Permalink

Indiana has a state a bird and a state flower. Now the state appears poised to recognize its wines. That’s altogether fitting since the Hoosier state wineries attract more than two million annual visitors who spend approximately $40 each per visit.

We now have a “signature” wine, thanks to an initiative of the Purdue Wine Grape Council team and support from the state Department of Agriculture, the state tourism office, the Indiana Wine Grape Council, and the wine producers themselves. Our honored wine is the Traminette, a fragrant white wine that ranges from richly sweet to refreshingly dry and is produced by more than half of the 43 wineries in the state.

According to Jeanette Merritt of the Wine Grape Council, the initiative will boost Indiana tourism and agriculture and  bring recognition to the state’s wine industry. The Council web site explains that the Traminette was developed at Cornell from the Gewurztraminer and from a grape labeled J.S. 23-416 specifically for survival and growth in the Midwest. I admit that Traminette is my own “go to” wine when visiting an Indiana winery or wine event. The wine has many of the characteristics of Gewurztraminer as well as Riesling and Sauvignon Blanc. You can learn a great deal about this “signature” wine at www.TryOnTraminette.org.

Not even Hoosiers seem to realize that commercial wine production in the United States began in Indiana and that the state was once the “wine capital” of America. Today the state’s wineries produce more than a million gallons of wine annually and earn for the state some $500,000 in excise taxes and pay out some $45,000 in tourism signage.

The Indianapolis International Wine Competition is the largest such wine event in the U.S. outside California and attracts more than 3,200 wineries annually from some 15 different countries. Last year, Hoosier producers took more than 250 medals in that competition.

Vintage Indiana, an annual June event in Indianapolis, attracts more than 10,000 visitors, and the Indiana Wine Fair at Story brings in some 5,000 visitors every April. With numbers like these, with the positive effect on tourism, rural development, and agricultural growth, it is fitting and proper for the state to recognize a “signature” wine. Now if only the state would re-craft its distribution and sales laws to show similar respect for the wine industry.

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