“We are known for our late season program,” said Louis Scattaglia, managing partner at Scattaglia Growers & Shippers LLC in Traver, CA. “We can harvest fresh grapes into December. As long as the weather cooperates, we are going to have a strong late-season grape deal.”

SGS grows, packs and ships a full lineup of table grape varieties in the central San Joaquin Valley, from early-season Flames to late-season Autumn Kings, but proprietary varieties exclusive to SGS are an increasingly important part of the company’s grape program.

“We continue to get great response [from customers] with our fall lineup of red and black seedless, and we continue to increase our acreage, especially with the SGS Red variety,” Scattaglia said. “It has great holding qualities — large size, full red color. We’ve really got great response from the retail sector with that grape, and we continue to add acreage of that to keep up with demand.”

Focusing on the late season, he said Aug. 8 that by the first of September “we will be finishing our Flames … and we will start kicking off our late season program of red, green and black seedless grapes. We will start harvesting our Scarlet Royal variety probably sometime in the first or second week of September. Crimsons will follow.”

Both the Crimsons and Scarlets have “exceptionally large-sized berries” this year, he said. Color is good as well. “We couldn’t be more happy with the quality of the crop at this moment. Everything seems to be set up perfectly, thanks to good weather.”

The Crimsons, in turn, will be followed by the SGS Red, “which has been a big hit with our customers nationwide,” he said. “It is really a strong, full-red grape that lasts into January” and can cover some of the supply gaps that can occur in the South American supplies at that time of year.

In the green seedless category, beginning mid- to late September, “we will be harvesting Luiscos,” Scattaglia said. “That variety will be followed up with our green seedless Autumn King variety. We continue to increase our acreage on both of those varieties, so that is a big growth category for SGS on the green seedless side.”

Beginning around the first of October, or “maybe a little sooner this year,” SGS will have Autumn Royal black seedless grapes, he said.

“All of our varieties, quality-wise, look exceptional at this time, and as an added bonus, our sizing here at SGS is exceptionally large,” he said.

“All SGS vineyards are GlobalGAP food-safety-certified,” Scattaglia noted.

With regard to packaging, SGS has “all pack styles” available, including various weights of clamshells, Scattaglia said. “SGS was one of the first with a fixed-weight pouch bag, and we also offer random-weight pouch bags” as well as traditional grape bags in a 19-pound pack.

New this year, “we have introduced an eight-ounce fixed-weight pouch bag,” a clear bag with the SGS logo, he said. That was still in “the early stages in the marketplace” but was already getting “tremendous feedback from our retail partners.”