With vineyards at the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley, Anthony Vineyards in Bakersfield, CA, has historically had some of the earliest grapes in the valley.

But “our retail partners have indicated that they would like to see us stay engaged in the business as long as we can,” said John Harley, vice president of sales and marketing.

Accordingly, the company has been extending its season in several ways. One is by an increase in the planting of late season varieties planted on ranches throughout the southern San Joaquin Valley — particularly some of the newer varieties such as Autumn King and Luisco.

In addition, the company will be covering the vines for the late season to protect the grapes from possible adverse effects of early rains. “We will take a look at that probably around the 10th to the 15th of September, and depending on what issues there may be with weather at that stage, it may even be earlier than that,” Mr. Harley said.

“The other thing will we do is we will utilize our packing facility that time of year a lot more than we are presently,” he said. “The grapes will be harvested at their peak,” then put in storage in field bins and stored “for as long as we can.” Then the grapes will be brought out of storage and house packed. That is a contrast to the traditional practice of packing the grapes before putting them into storage.

“This way we have a secondary quality check,” since the grapes are looked at in the packing process just before being shipped, he said.

When The Produce News talked to Mr. Harley Aug. 8, Anthony Vineyards had just finished harvesting Flames and expected to be finished with Sugraones by the end of the week. The Thompson harvest was underway and getting heavier. The Princess harvest was also underway and was expected to continue for another two or three weeks.

There would be a gap in red seedless grapes for the company, because “we don’t have a red that is behind the Flame” until Scarlet Royal starts, he said. Finding something to bridge the gap is “one of the areas we are looking at for new varieties.”

Meanwhile, “we can go in and catch the fringes” of the Scarlet Royal vineyards that have been exposed to sun and have more developed color and sugar more rapidly than the rest of the vines. “We have so many acres” of Scarlet Royal in production “that we can actually harvest quite a bit” in that way, he said.

The company has a good crop of Scarlet Royals, both organic and conventional.

In green seedless, he expected to go from Princess right into the Luisco harvest. “We will be two to three weeks away from starting Autumn Kings at that point,” he said.

“I would say that Luisco for us is probably going to be the month of September,” while Autumn Kings will come off primarily in October.

Crimsons should start about the end of August and go all the way through October and into November, he said.

Anthony Vineyards will also be harvesting Autumn Royals beginning about the first of September.

“We may make it into November” with all four of those late varieties, he said.