New Jersey Wine

New Jersey Wine

The production of wine in New Jersey has increased significantly in the last thirty years with opening of new wineries. Beginning in 1981, the state legislature relaxed Prohibition-era restrictions and crafted new laws to facilitate the growth of the industry and provide new opportunities for winery licenses. Today, New Jersey wineries are crafting wines that have earned recognition for their quality from critics, industry leaders, and in national and international competitions. As of 2013, New Jersey currently has 46 licensed and operating wineries with several more prospective wineries in various stages of development.

According to the United States Department of Agriculture's 2007 Census of Agriculture reports that the state's wineries and vineyards dedicated 1,043 acres to the cultivation of grapes. This acreage is expected to double with the forthcoming release of data from the USDA's 2012 Census of Agriculture. New Jersey wineries are growing Vitis vinifera, Vitis labrusca, or French hybrid wine grapes, and producing or offering for sale over eighty types of wines. In 2010, 1.72 million gallons (approximately 716,000 cases) of wine were produced by New Jersey wineries; making it the seventh largest wine-producing state in the United States. A considerable portion of New Jersey wine sales are non-grape fruit wine, particularly apple, blueberry, raspberry, and cranberry wines. These fruits are associated with New Jersey and can be purchased from many nearby farms throughout the Garden State. New Jersey’s 46 wineries generate between US$30,000,000-$40,000,000 of revenue annually.

Wealthy New Jersey landowners began to produce wines during the colonial period. In 1767, two men, Edward Antill and William Alexander, Lord Stirling received recognition for their successful efforts to cultivate grapes and produce wine on their plantations from the Royal Society of Arts in London. The Society had challenged colonists in Britain's North American colonies to cultivate grapes and produce "those Sorts of Wines now consumed in Great Britain." While the cultivation of grapes and fruit trees supported a flourishing wine industry in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the effects of Prohibition (1919-1933) and a legacy of restrictive laws constraining the industry's recovery subsequent to the its repeal, practically devastated the industry. For fifty years after the repeal of Prohibition, New Jersey was limited by law to a ratio of one winery license for every 1,000,000 state residents, which by 1980 effectively allowed for only seven wineries. The growth of the state's winery industry has been bolstered by the repeal, starting in 1981, with the New Jersey Farm Winery Act, of many Prohibition-era laws and allowed many small growers to open new wineries.