CROP MARKETING
Marketing conditions are poor in the California grape industry. Wineries are not renewing any contracts. Wine and general alcohol sales are down. We are hearing of some data that things may be changing, but we can’t believe any change in marketing conditions will affect this year’s crop. White grapes are showing some interest but generally all black grapes are in poor demand. In driving around the vineyards, we see a lot of FOR SALES signs. There have been a lot of marginal vineyards pulled out and there are some vineyards that have not been pruned. There has been mentioned that another 50,000 acres across the State need to be removed to bring demand and production in unison. That is frightening. It is encouraging to hear from our customers that they are trending towards increasing their orders from last year. Quite a few pulled back from their previous year’s orders with all the bad news hitting the industry. We hope this trend will continue and it is great to hear that the wine business across the country is going much better than in California.
CROP TIMING
We have had a cool May and early June. Nothing as the cold spring of last year. Even with the cool spring, crops of other fruits seem to be maturing in their historic time frame. Weather currently reflects our normal weather patterns; several days of very hot days followed by a cooling trend. We believe the grape crop will mature more towards its normal timing than the extremely late 2023 season. Just noticed on the weather forecast next week will be in the hundreds. That is typical. What is not typical, Tuesday's temperature is predicted to reach over 110 F. That will be too high, and some burn may occur. When we go around vineyards around the 4th of July, we assess the timing of the crop by seeing if any veraison is occurring in the O.V. Zinfandels. There was none as of yesterday. What we saw was a berry in two different Sangiovese vineyards that were having a slight change in color. Never saw that before. Zinfandel was always the first.
CROP SIZE
After visiting quite a few vineyards, we have concluded that the crop will be smaller than the average California crop. The bunch count doesn’t appear too low, but the berry size will be much smaller than last year. With the smaller berry size, bunches are looser. They are not quite as large as in past years and there appears to be some significant shatter in some varieties and vineyards. A lot of white varieties have very small bunches especially Pinot Grigio. Another factor that I am certain will affect the crop’s total crush numbers is the fact that there is a lot of mildew showing up in vineyards. I have visited our past growers’ vineyards, and they are not showing any mildew issues, but we have seen and heard of some vineyards with issues. That’s all these wineries may need to get out of their contracts.