By KAREN BINDER
Illinois Correspondent

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — Just as the Illinois wine industry is about to peak with 86 wineries, it has lost its last state-sponsored technical specialist. Mounting state financial pressures have resulted in budget cuts for the salary of the state enologist, Bradley Beam, whose work as a winemaking expert in Illinois is rooted in his graduate studies at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale.

Last fiscal year, Beam’s salary was split between the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he is based, and the Illinois Grape Growers and Vintners Assoc. (IGGVA), the industry’s private trade group.

Prior to this arrangement, the state enologist’s salary was covered by the now defunct Illinois Grape and Wine Resources Council, funded by a state grant administered in collaboration with the Illinois Department of Agriculture, Illinois Bureau of Tourism, SIU and UoI. This grant also provided funding for a state viticulturist to provide grape growing expertise and a marketing specialist to assist with business planning and promotions.

These positions and their support staff have been steadily cut away from the Illinois state budget since 2003, former Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s first year in office.

“We pretty desperately need someone like Brad here in Illinois to help us set some standards and to help us bring our winemaking skills up in quality,” said Paul Renzaglia, the general manager of Alto Vineyards in Champaign and Alto Pass, and an IGGVA member.

He added that building an enology and viticulture staff is a part of the model that has worked in other Midwest states, such as Indiana and Missouri.

Working as the state viticulturist since 2006, Beam plans to continue with the industry as a consultant and a wine researcher. Most Illinois wineries sell the bulk of their wine through their tasting room to visitors who stop by, while the rest is sold over the phone or Internet, or at some local stores catering to a rising demand for local products.

With a bachelor’s degree in horticulture from UoI, he has done research at Oregon State University, SIU and the University of Minnesota. His work has helped vintners with such fundamentals as winemaking sanitation, use of a pH meter for acidity measurements, alcohol content and sulfur dioxide of wine, as well as identification of wine flaws.

He believes the state has wine that could be “sold anywhere in the world.”

Although the industry’s state funding has been cut, Illinois stands to benefit financially if local winemaking continues to flourish. Bill McCartney is the executive director of the IGGVA, a nonprofit formed to promote the wine and grape industry in Illinois.

According to McCartney, the last economic impact study in 2007-08 revealed that wineries contribute $253 million to the state’s economy through construction costs, salaries, equipment purchases and other expenses. Besides this, McCartney says for every gallon of wine sold, $1.50 of excise tax goes into the Illinois general revenue fund. He estimates that every dollar once contributed by the state was returned to the Illinois budget 10 times.

While information sharing can work, hired specialists and official seminars speed the industry’s growth.

“The wine industry is very good about helping its new people, but we don’t want to go back to that model exclusively,” McCartney said.

After losing General Assembly appropriations that once totaled $500,000 per year, the IGGVA is putting more money into festivals and events in an effort to rebuild its budget through shared gate revenues.

“In my 13 years with the association, I’ve noticed a tremendous increase in quality. We like to ask people what kind of wine they like. Once we find a close match from Illinois, they are usually pleasantly surprised by its flavor,” he said.