The harvest campaign of table grapes of late varieties, although delayed by about two weeks, has passed the “conditional equator” by the beginning of the last decade of October. The pace of fall exports, according to the observations of specialists of winegrowers’ associations, is also far behind the schedule of previous years. The bulk of production is being stored in industrial refrigerators.
“This is a rather risky marketing strategy,” says Sergei Tutovan, head of the Association of Table Grape Producers of the Cahul region. – The ability of grapes harvested shortly after the rains to be stored for more or less long periods of time, even in high-tech, gas-controlled warehouses, is questionable. Ideally, even drip irrigation of the vineyards should be stopped well before the harvesting campaign, even if it is intended to store the grapes, at the sacrifice of part of the harvest.
According to grape growers, after a long period of rainfall in October, the problem of cracking and rotting berries has increased. The need to remove defective berries and initial sorting of the bunches during the harvesting process is slowing down the pace of harvesting. Before this month’s rainfall, workers in vineyards harvested up to a ton of grapes per day, but now the output has dropped to a few hundred kilograms.
Relatively low supply of grapes directly from plantations for export, apparently, supports wholesale prices for grapes even of low quality at a relatively high level. Thus, for “Moldova” grapes of export quality, the “demand price” last week fluctuated within 14-16 lei/kg. This is not a bad price, but in the middle of October last year it reached the level of 18 lei/kg.
In contrast to the situation on the “fresh market”, the supply of low-quality table grapes as raw material to wineries, according to the market operators, has significantly increased. At the same time, the purchase price dropped to 2.80-3.0 lei/kg.
Taking into account the difficult development of the harvesting campaign, some specialists of the winegrowing industry believe that the table grape harvest this year is unlikely to exceed 70-80 thousand tons.
