Wine Grapes 2 Oct 12

For California AG today, I'm Mike Stephens. This year's wildfires could affect the wine grape crop. Michael Miller, Director of Government Relations for the California Association of Wine Grape Growers, comments on how smoke could impact this year's crop. The smoke impact varies on the area and exposure

For the 2021 harvest. So far, I'm hearing good reports that that we haven't had a lot of smoke taint issues that while we have had fires, that the winds have blown the smoke mostly east and not to to the Central Valley or to the North Coast. That said, Amador Plaster Co. Some of those areas, they definitely got some smoke. There's no question about that. But but other parts of the state have not.

A winery will test the grapes for smoke

Exposure, how much smoke the grape has been exposed to, and it depends on the winery. You know, they they will do the chemical test of the grape to determine if there's any problem in some cases. The wineries will reject the grape or they'll take a conditionally and depending on what the test numbers are and that kind of thing. So it really depends on how much smoke the grape is exposed to.

The crop overall looks great.

The quality of the grapes this year looks really, really good across the state. Yeah, they're looking at a pretty good harvest here this year as far as the quality of the grape.