New York Wine & Grape Foundation

join or renew
Boldly,
cultivating.​

Research Program

Since its creation in 1985, NYWGF has sponsored an ambitious and comprehensive program in close coordination with the industry and academia. As with the promotion program, private sector funding is required to leverage the state matching funds. NYWGF’s annual research budget is normally between $350,000-$500,000 to support dozens of individual projects, mostly conducted by Cornell University’s New York State Agricultural Experiment Station in Geneva.

The private sector funds come from various organizations, businesses and individuals to support the three main areas of research: viticulture (grape growing), enology (winemaking), and wine and health. The state matching funds are allocated in proportion to the respective amounts of private sector funds supporting each category.

Particularly in the case of viticulture, NYWGF’s research committee and Board of Directors solicit recommendations from the Lake Erie Regional Grape Research and Extension Program, an industry committee of processors who conduct a thorough review of all proposals submitted. Once NYWGF receives their recommendations, the Foundation’s research committee makes final allocations to individual projects.

Like the promotion program, the research program is enhancing NYWGF’s overall strategic goal: “To have the New York grape and wine industry recognized as a world leader in quality, productivity, and social responsibility.”

Click here to view our 2023-2024 Funded Research Projects.

Accepting Proposals Now!

The Research Committee of the Board of Directors now welcomes new proposals for the 2025-26 fiscal year. Proposals are due by January 13th, 2025.

The full RFP, including this years research priorities, and templates for proposals, budgets, and final reports can be found at newyorkwines.org/researchers or click below.

researchers click here

Funded Research Projects

For 35 years, NYWGF has annually distributed funds to projects that provide the New York State wine and grape industry with short-term solutions and long-term strategic directions.

2023-2024 Research Reports
2022-2023 Research Reports
2021-2022 Research Reports
2020-2021 Research Reports
2019-2020 Research Reports

Market Research

The New York Wine Tourism Marketing Toolkit was created to provide practical marketing advice on how to increase visitation to tasting rooms and elevate visitors’ experience, thus making New York State a world premier wine tourism destination. The toolkit includes profiles of three potential visitor targets who exhibit a higher inclination to visit a New York winery. These profiles are coupled with recommended marketing strategies to motivate them to visit. The toolkit offers specific operational tactics that wineries and wine trails can deploy to generate greater brand loyalty from the visitor targets.

Learn More
Related News

Expanding the range of rapid analysis approaches to semi-polar volatiles and non-volatile precursors in grapes

September 9, 2022

Targeted measurements of volatiles or volatile precursors in grapes are useful for grape and wine quality evaluation, but these analyses are typically slow, and routine fee-for-service analyses are typically prohibitively expensive. Our group has previously demonstrated that sorbent sheets (SPMESH) could be used for rapid extraction of non-polar odorants from sample headspace. In the past year, we evaluated two novel extensions of SPMESH to make it more appropriate for analysis of semi-polar, lower volatility and

New York Wine & Grape Foundation Announces 2023 Research Themes

August 19, 2022

The New York Wine & Grape Foundation Research Committee is working to enhance the quality, focus and transparency of the annual research program funded by the Foundation. Towards that end, the committee is now seeking additional review and comment from industry members so that we may finalize the proposed research themes and use those themes to solicit and select research proposals for funding in 2023. The proposed research theme areas are as follows:  VITICULTURE:  Mechanization

Jennifer Phillips Russo

Increasing the Reliability / Scope of NEWA Weather and Pest Model Information 2021-2022

August 12, 2022

Grape growers face the risk each season of their vineyards being attacked by insects and diseases whose severity is dependent on the current season’s weather conditions. This results in growers needing to modify their vineyard IPM strategy on a yearly, monthly and, sometimes, daily basis. This has resulted in a critical need for a portion of a technician’s time to be devoted to installing, monitoring and maintaining the weather network to keep a robust stream