06/06/07 Last Look At The Grape

One last look at the grape. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. We've spent the last few days talking about the grape industry in the Pacific Northwest. Not wine grapes but grapes used in the production of juices and other products. One of the most popular grapes is the Concord and ever since I was a youngster growing up in Kansas, I have associated the name Welch's with grape juice. Guess it was just good marketing on their part. So to finish up this series on the flavorful little purple berry, I thought it was time to go to the source. Mike Concienne is the Senior Regional Manager for Welch's. CONCIENNE: It's a real high percentage of our juice or product goes into juice but we also put up jams and jellies. Ah yes, Welch's grape jelly. I feel a PBJ coming along shortly. Mike says this downward trend for grape prices seems to be reversing itself and is recovering. CONCIENNE: The market has actually strengthened, concentrate price have gone up so that's a good sign. I can be a bit of a pessimist sometimes and often see the glass half empty so I'm beginning to be concerned with the downside of the grape market over the last several years, will there be enough grape juice to make the jelly for my sandwich! CONCIENNE: We finished cluster counts about 10 days ago and they're running well above average. There's two components to yield, there's clusters per vine and berries per cluster and we don't know what the other component is yet so at this time we're anticipating an above average crop. Well that takes a load off my mind. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.