Every single grape producing region of South Africa - 1,500 km apart from north to south - has had rain over the past week and a half.
In Trawal, the Olifants River Valley, where the grape harvest started last week, they have lost half of their Flame and Tawny grapes because of thunderstorms and heavy rain over the weekend, says Nico Louw, head of marketing at Paarl-based Exsa which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year.
South Africa has had an unusual amount of rain and flooding so far this season and many rainfall records were dashed this week in the Western Cape.
“The sun isn’t shining at the moment, so that doesn’t help. We have to be spraying the vines to control botrytis and we need the sun to dry off the bunches, but at the moment it’s still very overcast.”
It has been a very difficult start to the season which, Nico remarks, had looked so promising at the outset.
The good news is because those varieties were almost ripe, the option exists to send affected grapes for raisin-making.
The bad news is yet another thunderstorm is predicted for the end of the week and it could delay next week’s planned start of the Hex River harvest.
“We do get a bit of rain during summer in the Western Cape, but it’s usually only from week 1 or week 2 onwards. This year the rain has been very early,” he says. “Last year this time Trawal also had rain.”
He notes: “We’ll have to be very careful with the packing. As an industry we’ll have to be very cautious and not to be too hasty.”
Even emptier early market
Bunches will have to be worked over in the packhouse which reduces the pace of packing.
“Unfortunately the early grape market will be even emptier, especially on red grapes,” he says.
White grapes from the Orange River too are in shorter supply. The Early Sweet and Prime crops from the Orange River Valley are light as a result of excessive heat during flowering in October.
On a bright note, Nico says that Exsa ordered all of their packing material six months ago and therefore they are not affected by the punnet shortages felt by others in the grape industry at the moment.
Exsa won’t be packing much for the local market.
Source - https://www.freshplaza.com
