Hung Out To Dry

摘要

Winegrape growers are increasingly frustrated by vintners' insistence that grapes hang longer, cutting growers' profits. BRAD Goehring was recently strolling through his vineyards in Clements, CA, located in the Lodi Viticultural Area, when he bent down and picked up an old, shriveled cluster, the grapes long gone. He had just been to a seminar on the issue of hang time — a term denoting the length of time grapes are left on the vine — when the viticulturist who was speaking stopped and held up a similar bundle of twigs. "If we don't do something, your clusters are going to look like this," Goehring quoted the speaker, chuckling. But the fact is, prolonged hang time is no laughing matter. Not when somebody's reaching in your pocket and removing thousands of dollars, and you can't do anything about it, because he's the one buying your winegrapes.