VVA Members:

I made a special appeal at out Winter Technical Meeting for donations to the Virginia Wine Council (VWC).  If you have already donated then thank you very much indeed.  If you have not made a donation then I ask that you read this email because it details how you can help and this is important to our industry.

 

You should be aware from the VWC newsletter, which is published on the Community Page of our Web Site http://www.virginiavineyardsassociation.com/community/, that the donation deadline for this legislative session was up at the beginning of this month.   Sadly we are $40,633.00 short of our $125,000.00 goal for funding the VWC until the end of this legislative session.

 

As Rob Jones, President, Alliance Group, points out the Alliance Group has made a significant investment in us, through employing Katie Frazier and Ben Rowe and they are doing an absolutely great job on our behalf.  It was a pleasure to work with them on Thursday at the Virginia Wine and Vine Day at the General Assembly where we met up with our representatives and sought their support for outdoor advertising (directional signs) and Winery and Vineyard Expansion Tax Credit support.  We need your support to ensure that they can continue until the end of the Legislative session.

 

David King has addressed our meetings on the benefits of the VWC before.  They are our advocates for our growing wine and vineyard industry in Virginia.  You can see from their Web Site at http://www.virginiawinecouncil.org/index.html that they are delivering a significant return on our investment and they have a full agenda for 2012, which we would like to see them complete.

 

Some Vineyards and Wineries have been extremely generous but this “coalition of the willing” is not meeting the goal.  We need a mechanism that involves everyone to ensure the continued support of the VWC.  I am asking that if you have not already made a donation to the VWC that you donate $12 or more for each acre of vineyard that you own. You can send your money directly to the VWC or you can send it to the VVA endorsed for the VWC.  Katie will consolidate donations on behalf of vineyard owners.  If every vineyard owner does this then we will fill the funding gap for this legislative session. We will also work with the Virginia Wineries Association to see if we can come up with a more equitable way of doing this next year.

 

Thank you for your support of the VWC.

 

Yours, as ever,

 

Bill Tonkins