The peak of the table grape season is upon us and demand is looking good! The question is... how is quality and supply? Here is the latest!<hr class="legacyRuler"><hr class="invisible minimal-padding">Nick Dulcich, President & Director of Sales for Dulcich & Sons, stated, “We’re currently harvesting in Maricopa, CA and McFarland, CA. Key word here is ‘unpredictable.’ It’s unpredictable weather for an unpredictable market, but we can kind of guesstimate that the market is gonna go up and down this year. Supply is at times limited, and sometimes we just know that there’s not enough supply to fill our customers’ needs. The quality is great- a lot of varieties are big; the bunch size is big and the stretch of the bunch is excellent and the berry size is extra-large. Very nice quality overall.<hr class="legacyRuler"><hr class="invisible minimal-padding">Account Manager for Castlerock Vineyards, Jason Fuller, explained, “The overall rain and cooler temps in the Spring really slowed down the crop and experienced a gap in between the southern regions and the northern regions from the moment that we got into Mexico, the Coachella region, all the way into California. The crop was a couple of million boxes short of what it had done in previous years. It really lightened up demand for the end of June. Supply is currently picking up; the quality seems to be very good for the fruit available. Typically at a time like this in August, there’s a lot more grapes on the market than currently exist today. On the whole I think the quality of the grape is good. It’s in a good position for promotion and looking forward to a good strong fall crop.”<hr class="legacyRuler"><hr class="invisible minimal-padding">Randy Giumarra, VP of Sales & Marketing for Giumarra Vineyards Corp., said, “With the cool, wet spring that we had, it definitely delayed the season and it brought the sugars on, particularly in the white grapes, a lot slower than we’re used to seeing. It’s prevented a lot of people from exporting white grapes. So now we basically filled the domestic pipeline, which has left the export pipeline wide open. Even though the industry came out of the starting block a little slowly, there is plenty of fruit out there to promote and we’re going into the month of August, which is the peak of the California table grape season. It’s a great time to promote table grapes.<hr class="legacyRuler"><hr class="invisible minimal-padding">As long as mother nature cooperates, promotable volumes will be available soon. Thank you for watching “The Bloom.”<hr class="legacyRuler"><hr class="invisible minimal-padding">
