Gret Grape Heist

Gret Grape Heist

Great Grape Heist. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. A little over a week ago someone managed to steal 1.5 tons of Mourvedre, a red wine grape that is traditionally grown in the southern Rhône Valley of France. Paul McBride, co-owner of Grand Rêve Vineyards says it appears to have been done by someone who knew what they were doing. MCBRIDE: It probably would have taken two or three guys by our estimates probably 3 hours to pick that much fruit. The way they cut the fruit and trimmed it off there leads you to believe they knew what they were doing. It wasn't just hacked off, these were carefully selected off the vine. Of course the big question is why would someone purposefully steal such a specific kind of grape? MCBRIDE: They picked enough to where you'd probably be able to make 2 barrels or maybe 50 cases of wine. That's not an insignificant amount of production especially as a garage guy so it's a lot of wine for a garage person. On the other hand it's a small amount for a commercial operation. But it strikes us that whoever did it was fairly sophisticated. They certainly had to understand the uniqueness of bush vine Mourvedre in Red Mountain. There is of course a reward for any information leading to the apprehension of the culprits and McBride says there will be some changes in security. MCBRIDE: Needless to say we've now realized we're going to need to step up some security and we will do that making access a lot more difficult to the site. It's not something you usually worry about. It's relatively unprecedented at this level but we must be doing something right if someone is willing to risk possibly going to jail to get a hold of a ton and a half of Mourvedre. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.
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