2024 may well be one of the most challenging years in recent history for the American wine industry. Let’s change that. Multiple Alarm Bells At the recent Unified Wine & Grape Symposium in Sacramento, several prominent experts in various fields sounded the alarms during the enormously popular “State of the Industry” session attended by several thousand industry members. Wine Economist Mike Veseth compared the present with the distant past when similar clouds were on the horizon. Wine market analyst Danny Brager cited several troubling trends in consumer demographics, beverage preferences, anti-alcohol pressures, and apparent wine industry apathy. Steve Fredricks of Turrentine Brokerage repeatedly urged California wine grape growers to immediately tear out 30,000 acres of vineyards—roughly the total in New York State for grape juice, wine, and table grapes–to alleviate the current and chronic excess supply situation. Let’s Get to Work! We possess

Along with New York and the U.S. Virgin Islands, California is facing a reduction in Federal Unemployment Tax Act (FUTA) credit for 2023, which means employers in California pay higher FUTA taxes retroactively in January 2024 for wages paid in 2023 due to the state’s outstanding federal loans. Many states, including California, experienced a FUTA Credit Reduction of 0.3% for 2022, and will be subject to an additional 0.3% credit reduction for 2023. What Is the Federal Unemployment Tax Act (FUTA)? The Federal Unemployment Tax Act (FUTA), passed in 1939, established a federal payroll tax to help fund and insure state unemployment benefits across the United States. This base federal payroll tax is 6% on the first $7,000 each employee makes in a year, which the employer is responsible for paying. Employers in most states are provided a Credit of 5.4% to this 6% FUTA rate. The results in a rate of 0.6%. State governments are also responsible for collecting unemployment taxes from

Majority Leader Chuck Schumer Meets with WineAmerica and Waterloo Container WATERLOO, NY–Senate Majority Chuck Schumer met on Friday, December 2 with leaders of WineAmerica, the National Association of American Wineries, and owners of Waterloo Container, a large supplier of bottles to the American wine industry located in the fabulous Finger Lakes wine region of upstate New York. WineAmerica President Jim Trezise, Vice Chair Scott Osborn of Fox Run Vineyards, and Board Member Erica Paolicelli of Three Brothers Winery met with their Senator and discussed WineAmerica’s National Economic Impact Study of the Wine Industry plus two legislative priorities. Scott Osborn, Erica Paolicelli, and Jim Trezise join Majority Leader Schumer The USPS Shipping Equity Act would allow the postal service to ship wine (and beer, and spirits) directly to consumers like FedEx and UPS have been doing for years. Federal funding for the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) of USDA to cond