WINE-GROWING.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 166, 16 July 1931, Page 9

WINE-GROWING.

HELP FOR INDUSTRY. REMOVAL OF RESTRICTIONS. PRIVATE MEMBER'S BILL. (By Telegraph.—Parliamentary Reporter.) WELLINGTON, this day. Proposals for the assistance of the wine-growing industry in New Zealand are contained in the Licensing Amendment Bill, introduced into the House yesterday by Mr. H. G. R. Mason (Labour, Auckland Suburbs). The measure provides that winegrowers be allowed to co-operate by selling each other's wine instead of each grower being confined to the sale of his own product as at present, that the licensing authority have power to grant the grower the right to use more than one depot for sales, and that the minimum amount of any sale be one reputed quart instead of the present two gallons. Mr. Mason informed the House that purpose of the bill was to give some relief and encouragement to the local wine-growing_ industry, which at present suffered hostility from two powerful factors—the licensed trade and the prohibitionists, neither of whom was inclined to look kindly upon it. By the licensed trade it was regarded as being something m the nature of a rival, and the prohibilonists regarded it as an extension of two +1 ? ns ? ( d tr aSe, so that between the o the industry received scant consideration. Remarkable evidence had 611 aS t0 the Dominio »'s adaptability to grape-growing, and if there were to be wine drinking i„ New Zealand as theic 'was surely :t should be of the product of the local industry. At present large quantities of wines were imported should be 1 c WaS tha? wh e * £ £».ri nated and the grower ri™ b % cllmi '