09/11/06 Wine group assists revitalization

Wine group assists revitalization. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. You often hear about local businesses giving back to the community. Washington Wine Country, a non-profit group working to help promote wine related tourism and economic growth has been doing their part of giving back. Janet Leduc is the founding director of Washington Wine Country. LEDUC: We're trying to help these wine towns begin to leverage the fact that they are in the wine country and to beautify and re-invigorate their downtown areas with signage and banners but some of these cities have come up with their own ideas of this as well. Last year the organization created the City Revitalization Fund. LEDUC: Basically what we do is grant, and it's a matching grant so they have to come up with at least 50% of the money. It comes from a fundraiser we do in the end of June called the Wine Country Celebration and Grand Gala. The three year old organization raised $36,000 in 2005 and this year has collected over $42,000 for community revitalization projects within eastern Washington wine appellations. LEDUC: When you become a wine country, people do come and visit and then later on corporate headquarters move in. Napa now has a lot of that as a result of the kind of quality of life that a wine country yields. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.