Ventimiglia Family Farm Winery in Wantage Twp. in Sussex County NJ.
Commercial Agriculture Putting New Jer ey Vintage on the Map In 2012, the annual meeting of the American Association of Wine Economists (AAWE) was held in Princeton, NJ, and, as is customary, the local wine industry was a particular focus at the meeting. The session on local viticulture featured Dan Ward, extension specialist in tree fruit and small fruit, including wine grapes, who presented “A Viticultural Map of New Jersey,” providing an overview of vineyard and winery locations, grape varieties being cultivated, soil and climatic conditions, and the viticultural map of recommended growing areas. Also at the conference, a special wine tasting was organized comparing select New Jersey wines with fne wines from Bordeaux, France. The tasting was modeled on the groundbreaking 1976 tasting, “The Judgment of Paris,” in which two California wines came out on top and inspired both a book by
njaes.rutgers.edu/ag 1
famed TIME reporter George Taber titled Judgment of Paris: California vs. France and the Historic 1976 Paris Tasting That Revolutionized Wine and a Hollywood movie by Randall Miller titled Bottle Shock. The tasting at the AAWE conference was dubbed the “The Judgment of Princeton” and was organized with help from Taber, a participant in the original 1976 wine tasting. New Jersey wines were generally rated as well as the fne Bordeaux wines that can cost signifcantly more. The fndings are part of establishing an identity for New Jersey as a world-class wine region. The results of the tasting are being widely publicized and will be featured in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Wine Economics, which will include a graphical and statistical analysis of the tasting by Ward.