Wine Grape Harvest Pt 1
With today's Fruit Grower Report, I'm Bob Larson. Although, it was going to be next to impossible to top their record numbers from 2016, Washington wine grape growers enjoyed another outstanding year in 2017.Washington State Wine's Heather Bradshaw says growers are pretty happy with the results ...
BRADSHAW ... "Washington state had a bit of a lighter wine grape harvest compared to 2016 in 2017. We crushed 227-thousand tons in 2017 which was about a 16% decrease compared to the 2016 harvest. But, you can remember that 2016 was really a record-breaking harvest, exceptionally large, and so we sort of see 2017 as a natural response to maybe the harvests evening out a little bit."
Bradshaw says in the end, 2017 was more of a quality over quantity kind of year ...
BRADSHAW ... "2017 fruit is awesome, it's really excellent. Winemakers and wine grape growers are thrilled with the quality of the 2017 fruit. The growing season started off cool. It warmed up nicely and cooled off again towards harvest time which lets the grapes really hang there on the vine for a while. And, it was really near ideal conditions for wine grapes. So, we're really excited to try these 2017 wines."
Washington State Wine's annual Grape Crush Report showed that the 2017 harvest was slightly larger than the 2015 harvest.
Grape growers received an average of $1,198 per ton in 2017, which was an increase of $41 over the previous year.
Listen tomorrow for more on the 2017 wine grape harvest.