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74 WINES&VINES July 2015 WINE INDUSTRY NEWS WINE EAST L ansing, Mich.—As of this May, wineries and vineyards in Michigan have access to a benchmark program that will allow them to learn how their businesses stack up to their peers. The Michigan Winery and Vineyard Benchmark Program was created by the part- nership of GreenStone Farm Credit Services, North Coast Ag Advisors and Farm Credit East, which has run the North East Winery Bench- mark Program in New York for seven years and will supply the data-analysis technology. North Coast Ag Advisors will work with winery owners and senior managers to identify business strengths and weaknesses, and find out how they are doing relative to similar win- eries. The program representative will also help wineries find strategies to capture the full market value of their products, develop mar- keting programs and find ways to control costs and increase efficiency. In order to participate in the program, win- eries must have the ability to collect financial and operational data. The Benchmark Program representative will also gather other basic in- formation about the winery, from the square footage of the tasting room to case production information. Participating wineries will receive an in- depth financial and operational report that compares their data with other winery busi- nesses of similar size, business model and re- gion. To maintain confidentiality, all identifying information will be removed from the data. An annual State of the Industry Benchmark Report will include the data from all partici- pants. An annual one-day conference will be held to share the report and present manage- ment information. Gregg McConnell, director of the Farm Credit East Winery Benchmarks Program, com- mented, "The average results of all the wineries are helpful, but the real value comes in the subsets of the data. We can isolate the highest price wineries from the lowest, the largest wineries from the smallest, and for specific regions, and also find trends over time. Those data sorts are extremely valuable." —Linda Jones McKee Benchmark Program for Wineries and Vineyards Debuts in Michigan EASTERN WINE LABS Serving the Analytical needs of East Coast Wineries WWW.EASTERNWINELABS.COM Ph 609-859-4302 Cell 609-668-2854 chemist@easternwinelabs.com AOAC Member EasternWineLab_Mar09.qxp 1/22/09 9:47 AM Page 1 Bird Netting - B E C O PA D - Y E A S T & E N Z Y M E S - C R U S H PA D E Q U I P M E N T - S T E R I L E F I LT R AT I O N - W I N E R Y H O S E - O A K A LT E R N AT I V E S