Crop Versus Crush

Crop Versus Crush. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

In the wine industry producers look at a couple of different figures to determine a successful year. Those things are the overall crop of wine grapes and what is called the crush. Ryan Pennington with the Washington Wine Commission explains.

PENNINGTON: There is an important distinction between the estimated crop which is of course that volume of fruit that is produced in the vineyard and the ultimate volume of fruit that gets sold and processed by wineries also known as the crush report. The Washington Association of Wine Grape Growers annually produces their crop estimate which estimates the full potential crop.

The crush report comes later in the year from the USDA. But why the differences?

PENNINGTON: We don’t always harvest everything that is grown. And it also depends on the point in time at which the crop estimate is taken because as the season progresses wineries and growers will make the decision in some cases to actually drop fruit, actually cut it off the vine and not harvest it in order to get the remaining fruit on the vine to a greater degree of ripeness.

Pennington says that this years crop estimate looks very, very good.

PENNINGTON: Probably looking at a new record crop which would be above the crop from 2010 which was 160-thousand tons. So we expect something perhaps approaching 200-thousand this year.

That is indeed a very large crop but again we wait to see what the actual crush report reflects. More tomorrow on the demand for Washington wines.

That’s today’s Fruit Grower Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.