11/30/07 Grape Crop

Grape Crop. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. Looking outside from my office you wouldn't think about grape harvest with snow falling around the northwest but the Washington Wine Grape harvest is officially complete according to Vicky Sharlau with the Wine Grape Growers. SCHARLAU: The snow's on the ground, we have finally finished the majority of the crush, most of the grapes are in and it looks to be an absolutely stellar crop this year. We're just receiving rave reviews from both growers and wineries about the quality of the harvest that's come in. Mother Nature has been getting a lot of credit for the exceptional crop. Scharlau says the crop got off to a fast start, and then slowed down to a fairly long finish this fall. SCHARLAU: It is turning into what we're projecting to be a real vintage to remember. From this point on it's really the winemakers magic that takes over so that they can provide consumers with that perfect glass of Washington wine. That's impressive when the last several years have seemed to get better and better and Scharlau says this one is also a big one. SCHARLAU: It also will turn out to be one of the largest crushes ever. We estimated in July that we we're going to have about 136-thousand tons was hanging on the vines at that point and we used that as a management tool and when we actually measured the crush at the beginning or middle of November we we're looking at about 127-thousand tons. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.