The fall varieties are where the California table grape industry has seen the most growth recently, including this year, and the same is true for Stevco as a company.

Based in Los Angeles with offices in Bakersfield and Coachella, Stevco is a vertical operation, producing all of its own fruit through its subsidiary farming company, Lucich Farms.

Although the company has had acreage and volume increases throughout the California season, its biggest growth is in the Autumn King variety, and “we also have added production of Vintage Red and Scarlet Royal,” said Jared Lane, vice president of sales and marketing, Aug. 5.

“WE are starting our Scarlet Royal harvest tomorrow,” he said. “That will last a little over two months,” carrying through September and into October. “We started Red Globes today. We are right in the middle of our Princess harvest” which was expected to last about another three weeks or so, to roughly Sept. 2.

“I don’t expect the Autumn King to come off until around the first of October,” Lane said. Vintage Red should also start about that time.

The early-season varieties were 10 days to two weeks early, he said. It appeared that the later varieties would be early as well, but not as much so. “Now we are only three to four days earlier” than normal.

According to Lane, the biggest appeal of the Autumn King green seedless grape variety to consumers is its large size and its visual appearance, but it can also be a very good tasting piece of fruit if farmed correctly.

“When it comes to Vintage Red, it is much larger than a Crimson, which is going to be its competition,” Lane said. It is also a firmer grape, and “it gets a fuller red color than a crimson.”

From a grower perspective, yields on Vintage Red, and on Autumn King as well, can be quite large, he said.

The flavor characteristics of a Vintage Red vary from grower to grower, Lane said. “I don’t think all Vintage Reds produced by different cultural practices all eat the same. Some might be very sweet, some might be challenging,” depending on location and the cultural practices employed.

At Stevco, “we have added some cost and inputs that we think will help the flavor. We feel it will be a very sweet grape.” Part of that has to do with the timing of the harvest, he added.

A big part of Stevco’s late season program is Red Globes. “We are extremely large in the Red Globe program,” Lane said. “We produce over 1.2 million [boxes of] Globes, so we are a big player in the export category.” Currently, “we are starting [the Red Globe harvest] in our Maricopa ranches, and we will transition up into our Bakersfield-Delano ranches” as the season continues.

Many of the Globes are stored for the Christmas period “and even New Year’s,” he said. Those are all packed in polystyrene foam boxes.

As Stevco transitions into the fall grape varieties, the company does “quite a bit of in-house packing,” Lane said. “We could go on and on about how many different pack styles” growers need to put up in order to meet customer preferences. “The challenge every grower is facing today is: What kind of container and bag do we put these grapes in? It seems like there is such a variance in types of bags these retailers are wanting or desiring,” and producers who don’t always have all of their fruit sold before it is packed face something of a quandary in deciding what type of bag and what type of container to put the fruit in. “I think that is the biggest challenge we are having in the industry right now.”

The pouch bag is “becoming more popular,” he said. “It seems to be more people are leaning toward that bag.”