The Wine Knows

What's the Washington wine industry worth? The bottom line is $3 billion for the state and $4.7 billion for the country annually, according to a new economic study conducted for the Washington Wine Commission and Washington Association of Wine Grape Growers.

Here's a breakdown:

-- 19,000 jobs in Washington with a payroll of $579 million, and another 10,000 jobs and nearly $300 million nationally. That's up from 11,000 jobs in 1999, the year of the prior study.

-- Winery revenue has increased to $436 million in 2006 from $289 million in 1999. In the same time period, the number of wineries has jumped from about 150 to more than 400.

-- Wine tourism has boomed. In 1999, 350,000 people visited wineries and wine-related events in Washington. In 2006, it was 1.7 million. Wine tourism brought in $237.6 million.

I'll have some more tidbits from this study a little later.