10/23/06 Wine Industry Snapshot

Taking a Snapshot of the Wine Industry. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. As a winegrape grower it's important to know you are providing the right product. But how do you do that? The Washington Wine Industry Foundation hopes to help. Executive Director Vicky Scharlau. SCHARLAU: We're going to be doing the Washington Wine Production Survey. Every year AgStats does a crush survey that they do automatically anyway and this year along with the USDA Risk Management Agency grant we're adding some additional questions in so they're doing both at the same time and it has more to do with overall production, stocks and potential. According to Scharlau it's a way for growers to know if they are hitting the mark. SCHARLAU: It's really a decision making tool not only for the wineries but for the growers because if they know that there's X-tons of grapes that the wineries wanted to buy but couldn't find, which is also on the survey, it's an indication to them of varieties they might want to look at in the future. There's also a question that talks about current inventory of wine stocks so they can see which varieties might be heavy that are sitting in storage in the state which would be an indication of things they might not want to plant. The information will be presented to the general session of the Wine Grape Growers Annual Meeting February 7th. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.