SAN ANTONIO, TX — As Mexico is generally expanding with new varieties, Fresh Farms is working very much in that direction, notes Jerry Havel, the director of sales and marketing for Fresh Farms, which is based in Rio Rico, AZ.

Havel spoke April 2 with The Produce News from his booth at the Viva Fresh Expo in San Antonio.

“On our farms we grow existing and new varieties to help with overall production. We have four very large farms and all of them are as modern and up to date and innovative as any grape vineyard in the world,” Havel noted.

This spring Fresh Farms’ volume of the new Cotton Candy variety will be up. “We won’t have enough volume to cover demand but we will have more than last year.” Fresh Farms is one of only two Mexican growers with the rights to produce Cotton Candy.

Havel said the Cotton Candy is “a naturally grown grape that, through genetics, tastes like Cotton Candy. We shipped it last year.” Cotton Candy is a green grape.

This spring Fresh Farms will also have promotable volumes of other green, black and the new, red licensed variety, Sweet Celebration.

Sweet Celebration has “a nice red color.” Like Cotton Candy, Sweet Celebration is in its second season of availability from Fresh Farms.

An interesting late-season green variety will be the Sweet Globe, which is a large, round seedless grape. It will become mature about June 10-15 and will finish around July 1.

“We will have a great crop for quality and size and taste. We will be slightly short of green, black and Red Globes.”

The peak of Fresh Farms 2016 grape season will be in the first week of June.     

Organic red, black and green grapes will be shipped through the season by Fresh Farms this year.

Fresh Farms will be shipping its first grapes of 2016 “in early May or maybe even earlier” from Hermosillo and Guaymas, Sonora, Havel said.

For Fresh Farms, the earliest varieties will be Perlettes and Prime. “These will be followed by Flame seedless five days later and we will have black seedless — the Summer Royal — a few days after that.

“We will have a large volume of Prime seedless and Perlettes in the month of May. Sugraone, another green grape, will start May 25.

“We expect greens to be a little short this year. That said, it will still be high volumes. We will have green grapes in May. There will be no shortage of greens until June. We will have Flames through June and most of our Sugraones will come in June.”

Fresh Farms “gives added value to our customers” by using HarvestMark for its traceability service. Food safety, and social responsibility practices are very high priorities for Fresh Farms, Havel emphasized.

This season Fresh Farms is continuing to use high-graphic handle bags. “The bags are all stamped with the Molina Quality logo. The Molina family has been growing grapes for 25 years in Mexico. The grapes are marketed by Fresh Farms but the Molinas like their name on the bag.”

Beyond the pouch bags, “We also offer clamshells in two-, three- and four-pound and fixed-weight bags for certain customers.”