The fall season is of particular importance to Columbine Vineyards in Delano, CA, “for the basic reason that that is where the heaviest volume is going to hit us,” said Anthony Stetson, sales manager in an interview with The Produce News Aug. 4. “For this company, the majority of our volume is in the later varieties” such as Scarlet Royal, Crimson, Autumn King, Black Globe, Red Globe and “of course” Columbine’s proprietary Holiday red seedless variety.

Because the grape harvest in California’s San Joaquin Valley has been running earlier than normal and it was appearing, as of early August, that the earliness would continue into the fall varieties, Crown Jewels Produce LLC in Fresno, CA was contemplating starting fall promotions earlier than usual, according to Atomic Torosian, a partner in the company.

“We generally have some big grape promotions the first two weeks of September, but we are having to look at that to see if we can start some of them sooner than that,” Torosian said Aug. 4.

SunnyGem Produce LLC takes extreme pride in the quality of pomegranates it is growing and marketing from its base of operations in Dinuba, CA. “SunnyGem was started by farmer John Vidovich in 2012 to market fresh pomegranates,” President Brian Haley told The Produce News.

“He planted over 2,000 acres of pomegranates mostly after 2008.” Haley said. “He originally used marketing companies, but as his volume went up, [John made the decision] to start his own company. We wanted to control our market strategy, which is ‘Consistency of Quality’ through vertical integration.”

It’s a recurring theme this year in California regardless of the commodity: availability of agricultural water, and the high cost of what water is available, is an almost universal concern.

At Castle Rock Vineyards in Richgrove, CA, as for the California table grape industry as a whole, the Autumn King, a relatively new green seedless variety, and Scarlet Royal, a relatively new red seedless variety, have become important varieties for the late season and continue to increase in volume, according to Jim Llano, sales manager.

Kevin Donovan, national sales manager for Phillips Mushroom Farms in Kennett Square, PA, told The Produce News that the company is seeing strong interest in organic mushrooms at the retail level.

“Some retailers have been on the organic trend since the get-go, and others are just beginning to promote it,” said Donovan. “We are also seeing a lot of expansion of the organics section in produce departments today. We are promoting our organic line accordingly.”