The key to being successful with seasonal supplies is to be able to fill a niche, said Steve Root, who is president of East West Unlimited LLC, a grape grower-shipper in California’s Coachella Valley.

“You’ve got to have a niche, and my niche is I am early,” he said. “I’m in the deal when there is still great demand. Most of my crop is sold in May when you just can’t get enough grapes.”

East West Unlimited’s Sugraones.Mr. Root has been selling grapes from Coachella for many years, and for the past 15 years he has been both a grower and shipper. He grows a number of different varieties, including Perlettes, Flame Seedless, Summer Royals and Sugraones. While the Sugraone variety has become the preferred green seedless because of its sweetness and improved shelf life, East West is still doing well with Perlettes. Again, Mr. Root points to timing of the crop to explain his success.

“Perlettes tend to break down on the shelf and so retailers don’t like them that much because they have a lot of shrink,” he said. “But it’s an early grape so we still do pretty well with it. No reason to pull them out and spend more money (putting in new varieties) when we still have a good (marketing) window.”

He said his Perlettes were planted in 1980 so the vineyard is more than three decades old and still has a lot of life left. “It’s basically the same as a car. A vineyard will last as long as you take care of it.”

Some warm weather in early April has helped speed up the growing cycle and put production back on target after a cool winter. “We typically start between the 8th and 12th (of May) and it looks like we will do that again,” he said.

Mr. Root said a good market should accompany the beginning of the season, as production from both Chile and Mexico should be fairly light throughout May.

Though the acreage for East West has not increased this season, the company does expect to have a bit of an increase in volume as some of its acreage has matured and moved into peak production.

Mr. Root, who likes to expand his opportunity for publicity to include some political views, did not disappoint once again this year.

“What I’d like to see in print is a comment about all the foreign product that is flooding the market from Chile and everywhere else. I’m not just talking about grapes, but apples and oranges and everything else,” he said. “Everyone is worried about our tax base, especially here in California, and if we didn’t have so much foreign product keeping prices down, there would be more taxes paid on our products. It sure would help our tax base if we had higher prices because then we would have to pay higher taxes.”