California’s Napa Valley expects its best harvest in four years

Danny King

Monday, Sept. 19, 2005 | 10:32 a.m.

Grape growers in California's Napa Valley, the best-known U.S. winemaking region, said they are expecting their biggest harvest in four years.

Napa Valley, the site of wineries including Robert Mondavi and Mumm as well as the winemaking estate of filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, is in the midst of "the crush," as the annual harvest is known. Farmers said their cabernet and chardonnay crops are larger than they were in 2004, and prices may exceed last year's because favorable weather has improved the quality.

"Overall, it's looking really good," said Greg Fowler, senior vice president in charge of winery operations at Constellation Brands Inc.'s Icon Estates division, which operates Robert Mondavi Corp. "If you have a good harvest, you're pretty jazzed for the rest of the year."

California's wine-grape crop may yield $1.8 billion this year, according to estimates by the state and farmers. That would be the best harvest since 2001, state Food and Agriculture Department records show. Growers sold $1.58 billion in fruit in 2004. Farmers expect to harvest 2.95 million tons, 6.5 percent more than last year.

"Mother Nature gave us a big crop," Jon Ruel, director of viticulture for Trefethen Vineyards, said in an interview.

The valley, located 45 miles north of San Francisco, produces about 4 percent of the state's wine grapes by weight and about 22 percent by dollar value. Napa grapes cost five times the average in California because they are of higher quality.

California's grape prices may be higher than the average of $571 a ton paid in 2004, Ruel and other growers estimated. Napa Valley grapes sold at $2,936 a ton last year, according to the state. Final harvest prices will be released in February.

"It's going to be probably one of the greatest harvests ever," said George Rose, spokesman for Santa Rosa, California- based Kendall-Jackson, the No. 8 U.S. winemaker last year with 12,000 acres in the state. "We're looking at a 2 percent to 4 percent increase over last year, which was a great year."

Icon Estates is paying about 10 percent more for its chardonnay grapes than a year earlier, Fowler said in an interview. It is paying about 3 percent more a ton for Napa cabernet grapes. Icon buys about 5,000 tons of grapes a year.

Ruel said his 500-acre vineyard will yield about 10 percent more than it did last year. Trefethen sells about a quarter of his crop to Napa wineries including Cakebread Cellars and Rombauer Vineyards and harvests the rest for its own wine.

"It's not a bumper crop, but it's solid," said Jason Kesner, vineyard manager at the 180-acre Hudson Vineyards, which sells to winemakers such as Kistler Vineyards and Neyers Vineyards.

The 2005 crush follows years of oversupply, falling demand and uncooperative weather. As wine grape prices approached $600 a ton in 1997, California's Central Valley and other regions planted more vineyards, boosting the statewide harvest to 3.36 million tons in 2000, 31 percent larger than 1998's crop. The price for wine grapes fell 11 percent to $530 a ton in 2003 from $597 in 2001, according to state statistics.

"The Central Valley was over-planted in the late '90s, and there was no home for that wine," Ruel said. "We think we've come back into supply and demand being more closely balanced."

Statewide grape prices rose 7.7 percent last year, compared with 2003. With a similar increase this year, state growers may sell as much as $1.81 billion in grapes, the largest amount since $1.82 billion in 2001.

As growers anticipate a lucrative harvest, tourists are descending upon the 400 wineries that stretch along 30 miles in Napa Valley. Last year, 3.87 million people visited the area, according to California's Tourism Department.