“For the last four or five years, I’ve been saying, ‘I look forward to 2016!’ ” said Carlos Bon, fruit category manager for Divine Flavor LLC. “This year there is a lot of stuff happening that is exciting and up and coming. What we’ve been talking about is becoming a reality — for real! We have new varieties and new, amazing grapes. We are way past going from limited volumes to supply our most important customers. We can now supply the amount of Cotton Candy they’ve wanted. We are seeing the full potential for what we’ve been working on for the last few years.”

As young vineyards mature and yields increase, “our growth will continue to be exponential.”

Headlining Divine Flavor’s new specialty varieties are Cotton Candy, Muscat Divine and Concord Divine.

Cotton Candy is a white grape that tastes remarkably like cotton candy.

Available in limited volume in 2016 — with increasing availability in coming years, the Concord Divine has the taste of the Concord grape that is indigenous to the northeastern U.S., but is very different because it is seedless, has a thin skin, is not chewy and is firm. Concord Divine has limited volume already in 2016 with more coming in the next years. Bon said it has “the Concord flavor that everyone loves but in a texture that people will love and not have to spit seeds out! Kids will go crazy for this, it’s like grape juice or grape jam in a healthy piece of fruit, awesome for kid snacks.”

Muscat Divine will become available in 2017. “This will include several red seedless Muscat varieties to fulfill different time frames and have an amazing Muscat eating variety in the shelf for a long period of time,” Bon said.

In 2018, Divine Flavor will roll out in very low initial volumes a fourth specialty variety, Tropical Divine. Tropical Divine is Bon’s personal favorite. It “tastes like mango or pineapple or lychee, depending who you ask. There is a burst of flavor in every bite. Hands down it is our most exciting project.” Its color is between green and red, “like a Fuji apple. It is actually aesthetically so different that you can differentiate it on the shelves.”

Bon said that Divine Flavor is the first North American company to commercially plant Tropical Divine and Divine Concord.

Divine Flavor is extremely careful in making the enormous financial investment to plant commercial volumes of new varieties.

The firm plants many test plots of promising possibilities. If a large number of preliminary production and commercial characteristics pass muster at Divine Flavor, the most promising fruit is sampled for feedback from retail customers. Eventually, a few highly select varieties are commercially planted.

In its broader scope this year, Divine Flavor will harvest five different varieties of all three colors of seedless grapes: white, red and black.

Certain varieties, such as the seeded Red Globe have been removed and replaced by “exciting, high-flavor varieties. I’d venture to say that out of 100 percent of the total acreage we’ve planted over the last two years, 85 percent of that was of proprietary varieties.”

Within Divine Flavor’s aggressive planting “organics are a big part of our business.” This involves the use of virgin soil that, with appropriate other practices, immediately qualifies for organic certification.

The firm’s top grade brand is Divine Flavor or Divine Flavor Organic.

Divine Flavor is based in Nogales, AZ, where it owns a modern new refrigerated warehouse and office complex. Grupo Alta, which owns Divine Flavor, is a multi-faceted agricultural producer based in Hermosillo, Sonora. This year, the firm is tripling the size of its Hermosillo packinghouse to have more efficient and improved bagging and clamshell operations. The packing area will be enclosed to help keep stray flying insects out of the process.

Divine Flavor will expand its Guaymas packinghouse in 2017.

Bon said the Sonoran grape harvest will be early this season, with the first volume coming in “very, very early May.” The firm will be shipping all three colors of table grapes until the last week of June.

From early April until May 15, Divine Flavor will be shipping 200,000 boxes of “very juicy” organic peaches.