“I can’t state that we are there yet, but that is the promise we have made to our retail partners and we are moving in that direction,” he said, advising those attendees to come to booth No. 604 to hear about their progress.
In mid-June while talking to The Produce News, grapes were top of mind for Aguirre Camou. He commented on Tropical Storm Alvin, which swept through the state of Sonora in Mexico, especially the Caborca region, on June 1, causing some damage to some of the early grape varieties and hampering production at the front end of the season.
“To tell you how rare it was and the impact of climate change, there had not been rain in Caborca on June 1 in more than a century,” he said. “Flames got hit the hardest.”
Aguirre Camou said on the positive side the later maturing varieties, which include almost all of the newer, sweeter fruit developed by the private sector, did not suffer damage. “The rain, in fact, was good for those varieties,” he said mentioning Sweet Celebration, Cotton Candy, Gummyberries and Jellyberries among them.
On Friday, June 13, Aguirre Camou said peak shipments of many of the newer varieties were underway with excellent supplies of both conventional and organic fruit expected to be on retail shelves throughout the rest of June and most of July. “We are now harvesting and shipping those high flavor varieties and we will continue to be loading (from Sonora) through the second week of July,” he said. “That means Divine Flavor will have grapes from Mexico through the fourth week of July, which is the week of July 21 to 25.”
At that point, the Nogales, AZ-based company will shift its grape emphasis to the Bakersfield region of California. Aguirre Camou said 2025 marks the third year that Divine Flavor’s California growing partners will be selling its brand of organic and conventional table grapes.
“We consider those Divine Flavor farms as we have been very involved on the growing end,” he said. “When we commit to a grower, it is always for more than one season, which is based on our own business model. Our partner growers are in for the long run and so are we. We should have both organic and conventional grapes from Bakersfield from mid-August to late October.”
In early November, Divine Flavor’s grapes supplies will come from Northern Peru with Southern Peru vineyards chipping in with volume in December followed by Chile from January through March, which is when the Mexico grape season in Jalisco begins. Divine Flavor has extensive acreage in that central coastal state.
Aguirre Camou admitted that some of those regions present challenges for organic grape production, but Divine Flavor’s agronomic team is working hard to overcome those supply gaps. For the first time in 2025, Chile was able to ship a limited number of organic grapes to the U.S. market as a systems approach for pest management was available as an alternative to fumigation. Aguirre Camou said Divine Flavor is working with its Chilean growers to offer an organic option, but he cannot yet promise that it will happen in 2026.
He added that Jalisco also has difficult cultural and climatic issues that need to be overcome for the development of organic production from that district, with efforts to find solutions ongoing.
At OPS, the company will also be touting its year-round availability of organic tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers from its greenhouses throughout Mexico. In recent years, Divine Flavor has expanded into Central Mexico, which gives it facilities in a half-dozen Mexico states including Sinaloa, Sonora, Jalisco, Baja California, Querétaro and Guanajuato. This has allowed it to offer a consistent year-round supply of its first-grade hot house vegetables.
As with all of its specialty produce, Aguirre Camou said the ultimate goal is to give its customer consistent supplies of top-quality produce throughout the year.
