Posted on 06/30/2006 11:38:46 AM PDT by Tamar1973
Elias Torres will pick grapes this season for the first time in 25 years.
The vineyard manager usually sends his laborers to do the work. But in the last two months, more than half of his 60-person staff has disappeared, he said, as a result of federal immigration crackdowns. So Torres, a 57-year-old quadruple bypass survivor, will pluck and sweat alongside field workers -- and even the vineyard owners who hire him to bring them in.
"This is the worst labor shortage I've seen since I came here in 1961," said Torres, a native of Guanajuato, Mexico, who manages work teams for more than a half-dozen growers.
Sonoma and Napa county vineyard owners -- those who grow and sell grapes to wineries -- are panicking that a recent evaporation of field workers will leave them unable to pick all their grapes at harvest in mid-September. Many are already three weeks behind schedule on crucial tasks that lead up to harvesting.
"If it continues the way it is now, we're not going to have guys and there are going to be grapes left on the vine," said Gio Martorana, a vineyard owner in Healdsburg, who sells Zinfandel, Chardonnay and other grapes to Gallo, Sonoma Creek and Amphora wineries.
That means pain at the beginning of the wine chain, where growers' labor costs have leapt as much as 25 percent this season, in part, due to a shortage of workers.
Wineries selling varietals to glassy-eyed tourists and supermarket shoppers don't grow all the fruit for the wine they make. Rather, they buy tons of specially tended grapes from surrounding growers, often contracting with several each season.
(Excerpt) Read more at sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com ...
Your observations about Chavez are spot on.
Thats one out of the millions on welfare, hardly earth shattering or budget busting.
Which "majors" chardonnay to you recommend? I like dry.
This could totally mess up the Ripple and Cold Duck, not to mention my personal favorite, Thunderbirds, ready availability.
No kidding! Probably half of the boutique winery owners are in it for their own egos. My family has successfully made money in the wine business for at least 500 years, including over 100 years in California. I remember the tax structure in wine back in the 50's and 60's (and before) where your wine inventory was taxed every year - making aging prohibitively expensive relative to the price the market would pay. Bulk wines used to take a trip to Nevada in refrigerated tank cars during the tax inventory time, I always smiled when I was at the SJValley winery in late February and early March as the trainloads of empty tank cars came it and left full.... perhaps you remember those days as well. I also remember the stories of a family meeting held as the end of prohibition was being announced and the family was trying to decide whether to concentrate on fine wines in the Napa and Sonoma areas or make bulk wines in the valley. The decision was to concentrate on making what one of my great uncles described as "sound commercial wine" because, as my grandfather put it, we can make money making wine people will buy at a price where we make money, or we can go broke making fine wines. (Remember in 1964 BV Private Reserve Cab sold for $1.50 a bottle when the regular BV Cab was $1.00 - it was much worse in the late 30s and 40s. Simi walled up several thousand cases of their famous 1935 Cab so the tax guys would forget about it and only brought it out again around 1970 for the then unheard of price of $35 a bottle - and you could only buy some if Isabelle Haigh decided you were 'OK' - She'd test people by having them drink carignan (I can her her cackling 'be a man, drink some carignan') but, I digress).
It's interesting that you look at the equation on the pricing as related to the boutiques (admittedly high) cost per bottle based on the cost of land and overhead based on some notion of what's needed to recoup investment (and/or provide a ration IRR).
My take is from the other end: the consumer is (by and large) willing to pay only a given amount for wine of a given quality level. (We're not talking the few truly unique wines here) All things being equal, the majors can (when they want to) make quality wines at lower costs than the boutiques. Since I don't drink 'exclusivity' but only taste, I'm not willing to pay premium because the boutique has higher costs. To me an item is overpriced in the market when equivalent quality is available for less - the producers' relative costs are irrelevant to my choice.
How about, "American grape growers are priced out of the market by low-cost imports". It happened to the French, and it can happen to us too.
That's because I'm a finance geek who decided to become a wine geek.
Do you really? Everyone says they like dry whites (except a few women who admit they like it 'a little sweet'), but most people will pick wines with a fair amount of residual sugar.
After almost 50 years of drinking mostly California whites, when I want a not terribly expensive dry chardonnay, I drink real simple Chablis from a reputable shipper or if it doesn't have to be that dry, a good Macon Villages. It's not that such wines can't be made in California (though Chablis can't quite be matched), but rather that very dry, crisp style is not popular in California. And, the French wines are far better values, at least on the East Coast. Used to be you could get wines like that in California - of course the Hanzell was like a big white burgundy, but for many years Wente made a very nice clean crisp chardonnay.
It's really hard to recommend wines, because everyone's taste is different. There are only two things to know about wine tasting, one is simple, the other deceptively difficult:
1. Pull a lot of corks (i.e. try a lot of things).
2. Remember what you taste (develop a taste memory, take notes).
Very few people have reliable taste memories. Mine is only fair these days. My grandfather had a legendary taste memory - he could vividly describe wines he'd tasted before 1900 in ways that others who knew those wines said was remarkably accurate. He remembered everything he tasted, even bad wines; it was very enjoyable to taste with him, especially as he would describe how a wine was developing over time in the tank, then in barrel, and in bottle over time.
And I'm a wine guy who studied economics. I'm looking at the price from the market level, you're looking at it from the enterprise level.
Interesting the slightly different perspective. There's obviously a market framework that you operate in, whether it's wine or widgets, but the enterprise economics also have to be addressed. In my case, I made vineyard decisions based on the fundamentals of the market so I was quite sensitive to both.
I own a business too, I won't deal in illegal, or unethical, or (immoral for the faithful) practices to survive.
I will succeed or fail honestly, although in the contracting business many contractors of a shady bent will use illegal foreign labor to make up for their incompetency or more often just to feed their greed (isn't that always the reason?),I won't.
I picked winegrapes for $6.50/hr a few summers ago (I am an American, and I volunteered to do it!). Did it mainly for the experience. It was hard, hot, backbreaking work. Not difficult, per se, but hard on the ole' spine. Doing it for a couple hours may be "fun," but doing it for 6 or 7 is generally considered "work." Then you have the occasional shear that rears up and bites you on the finger. Not pleasant.
There are unions all over Japan and in all Japanese industries. But, unlike unions here they have not sought their own gain on the alter of their company's disadvantage, as opposed to the world-renown behavior of U.S. unions; and thus why many foreign firms here have tried to avoid them, here.
As for working for a Japanese firm, here in the U.S., why don't you ask a Toyota employee in Kentucky if they would rather work for GM - and miss out the kind of five figure profit bonuses most of them got last year. Wonder why they prefer Toyota to a UAW job with GM?
You're not insane. Expensive is not a term usually connected with lambrusco, which is an Italian wine which is not typically appreciated by serious wine drinkers. The "Lambrusko" spelling is not unusual in Germany or Eastern European countries. Although it is not nearly as common as it once was, it is not unusual for wines made in France or Italy to be purchased by a negociant in say Germany, Belgium or England, shipped to the negociant in bulk (usually barrels for good wine) and for the wine to then be bottled (often after blending) in the negociant's cellars for sale. In your case, it might have had a label entirely in German if the wine was imported by a German negociant for an entirely German clientele. As an aside, the best bottle I've ever had of the 1955 Château Ducru-Beaucaillou was bottled in Belgium by a negociant who was known (in the day) for reliably importing bottling top growth Bordeaux. So, it's quite possible yours was an particularly well thought of exemplar of the negociant's Lambrusko.
It probably never occurred to Mr. Torres to put an add in the paper for temporary help.
Teenagers and young adults around here can not find any work this summer, because the illegals have taken all the temporary jobs.
He just doesn't want to fork over the $50 bucks to place an ad in the "Help Wanted" section of the newspaper.
Sounds to me that if they're short X number of workers, there should be a corresponding drop of X number of welfare cases in that county.
I pick and can berries for two weeks every summer. I have picked for several hours a day for the last few days (pre-season).
At peak season, I will pick all day, then make and can jam until I drop each day.
I will pick and can 21 acres of berries and grapes--90% BY MYSELF, 10% family labor--over two weeks.
Picking is hard work, but it can be done BY ANYONE who can move his arms, including 10-yr-olds.
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