New York Wine Industry Has Arrived ROCHESTER, NY (WXXI) - New York's wine industry is basking in some golden days.

The New York Wine and Culinary Center opened over the weekend in Canandaigua. "Wine Spectator" magazine released an issue last month focusing on New York Wines. And a new winery tour region is shaping up in the North Country along the Seaway Trail.

The State Agriculture Department says New York has gone from 19 to 230 wineries over the last 25 years.

That's all good news to Jim Tresize (TREE-size) who has headed the New York Wine and Grape Foundation since the 1980s.

He says a long struggle to promote New York's wines has payed off. In the early 1980s, Tresize says vineyards were an "disaster economically" in the Empire State. Today, he says wine is the fastest growing sector of New York's agriculture economy, and the second fastest for the state's tourism industry.

Tresize says he doesn't see the rapid growth of New York's wine industry slowing down for at least another decade. He says the industry already contributes three-point-four billion dollars a year to the state's economy. And he says wine tourism has grown ten-fold since the Wine and Grape Institute was founded in 1983.

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