Why New Jersey wines now? Not a hard question by any means, yet I froze. Not just a chill, a freeze of glacial proportions. That was the first question posed to me by Andrew Meyer in a recent radio interview on WBGO Jazz FM 88.3. My first thought was: Why not?

As 2011 draws to a close, New Jersey winemakers are eagerly awaiting a vote in the state Assembly that will affect the future of the Garden State wine industry.