Washington’s wine grape growers harvested more tons of cabernet, merlot, riesling and other wine grape varietals this year than ever before.

Vicky Scharlau, executive director of the Washington Association of Wine Grape Growers, said 127,150 tons of wine grapes were picked this fall — a 5.5 percent increase over last year.

“Mother Nature smiled on Washington state once again this year and provided an ideal climate for grapes,” Scharlau said. “She provided us with a fast start, a slow middle and a long finish to produce a vintage to remember.”

Butch Milbrandt, co-owner of the 1,300-acre Milbrandt Vineyards, said in addition to having a good growing season, temperate fall weather helped produce a seamless harvest.

“Every day we were able to bring in a 100 ton or so, and we didn’t have to wait for fruit to harvest,” Milbrandt said. “It seems like every year the winemakers say the vintage is better, but this year the grapes are better and the quality really is there.”

But the record amount of grapes harvested this year had nothing to do with growing season or quality of the grapes.

“(This year) the crops were actually smaller, there’s just more acres into production which makes the total higher,” said Scott Williams, winemaker at Kiona Vineyards & Winery on Red Mountain. “But the grapes got as ripe as we wanted and the color was really good for the reds. The wines are going to be really good.”

READ FULL ARTICLE…

Discuss this article in our Wine Marketing Forums!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 4th, 2007 at 3:56 pm and is filed under Wine Production. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

Other Network Sites: Wine Reviews, Ratings & Wine Prices | Wine Videos | Wine SEO