October 6, 2017
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CapitalPress.com
11
Idaho
Food service pros
tour potato harvest
By JOHN O’CONNELL
Capital Press
Sean Ellis/Capital Press
A farmworker picks chardon-
nay wine grapes in a field
near Caldwell, Idaho, on Sept.
28. Idaho’s 2017 wine grape
harvest will be significantly
reduced due to damage caused
by a bitter January cold snap.
2017 wine
grape
crop hit
by frost
By SEAN ELLIS
Capital Press
CALDWELL, Idaho —
Idaho’s wine grape crop will
be significantly reduced this
year due to severe damage
caused by a bitter January
cold snap.
But 2016 was a bumper
year for wine grape produc-
tion in Idaho and that will
help lessen the impact, vint-
ners and vineyard owners told
Capital Press.
Wine grape harvest in this
area recently kicked off and
growers are expecting mark-
edly reduced overall tonnage.
Dale Jeffers, manager of
Skyline Vineyards, said the
low temperature reached mi-
nus 26.9 degrees in his vine-
yards near Nampa on Jan. 7
and it reached minus 24.5 and
minus 21 the two days before
that.
Other growers reported
low temperatures of between
minus 20 and minus 23 on
those days.
The result was a massive
reduction in this year’s wine
grape crop in southwestern
Idaho, where most of the
state’s wine grapes are grown.
Jeffers, who has been
farming in the area for 30
years, said, “I certainly don’t
remember anything colder
than that. It’s pretty devastat-
ing.”
He said he will end up har-
vesting only about 54 of the
470 acres of wine grapes he
has in production.
Temperatures
reached
minus 20 degrees near vine-
yards owned by Williamson
Orchards and Vineyards in
Caldwell, said manager Mike
Williamson.
“Our harvest is way, way
down,” he said. “I’d say we
will not be picking about 95
percent of our crop this year.”
Winemaker Martin Fu-
jishin, who owns Fujishin
Family Cellars in Caldwell,
started picking wine grapes
Sept. 27.
“We still don’t know what
the full impact is going to be
but I can tell the crop is quite
a bit lighter,” he said. “We’re
probably looking at about
40 to 50 percent of a normal
crop.”
Fujishin was more fortu-
nate than some other vintners
in the area in that he sources
many of his grapes from older,
higher-elevation vineyards,
which “actually weathered
through pretty well compared
with the lower-elevation vine-
yards,” he said.
Huston Vineyards own-
er Gregg Alger said he will
harvest about 15 tons of wine
grapes this year, down from
the normal 120 tons. But he
said last year’s large crop will
help lessen the pain.
“We were blessed with the
2016 harvest being so beauti-
ful,” he said. “A lot of folks
last year had to find extra
tanks and barrels. They had a
little extra that can carry them
through this year.”
The blanket of snow on
the ground that reached two
to three feet deep for an ex-
tended period helped insulate
some of the vines.
PINGREE, Idaho —
Twice each week, Egan Click,
with Sysco Corp. in Chicago,
inspects 100,000-pound rail
loads of Idaho potatoes to
make certain they meet cus-
tomers’ size and quality spec-
ifications.
But Click acknowledges
that prior to participating in
an Idaho Potato Commis-
sion-sponsored harvest tour,
he didn’t fully appreciate the
“unbelievable” process Idaho
growers, packers and shippers
follow to meet the standards
associated with their state’s
seal.
Click was among the 28
professionals within the grow-
ing food service category IPC
included in a Sept. 26-29 tour.
Participants representing ma-
jor potato markets such as
Illinois, California, Texas and
New York toured potato har-
vest, a fresh packing opera-
tion, a dehydrated potato plant
and a frozen potato processing
plant.
“My director wanted
me to get a better sense of
knowing what I’m looking
for,” said Click, who vowed
to have more empathy when
he encounters future spud
defects.
Don Odiorne, IPC’s vice
president of food service, said
the food service professionals
head home with photographs
and stories about Idaho po-
tato production to share with
their staffs and may become
“brand advocates.”
“They are telling us, ‘We
need to be able to respond
to our customers when they
have questions about pota-
toes,’ so this is a real good
way to build loyalty among
those who are buying Idaho
potatoes and paying a premi-
um for them,” Odiorne said.
During the past year, the
volume of U.S. potatoes sold
by the food service sector —
comprising food consumed
outside the home — sur-
passed retail for the first time,
Odiorne said.
After leading the IPC
group on a tour of his com-
pany’s fresh packing facility
in Pingree, Kevin Stanger,
with Wada Farms, said more
homes have two working
parents, and there are fewer
traditional households, where
families routinely dine on
home-cooked meals.
“It isn’t a huge shift, but
it’s a continual shift of people
who don’t have time to cook
at home,” Stanger said.
Odiorne believes con-
sumers are also demanding
a broader variety of creative
and ethnic foods that would
often be too challenging,
costly and time consuming to
prepare at home.
To reach the food service
sector, Odiorne said IPC ad-
vertises in food service pub-
lications and sends a calendar
featuring creative potato ideas
by top chefs to 50,000 chefs
each year.
Tour participant Maryanne
Dinardo, a manager serving
the Lake Erie area with U.S.
Foods, said her company
plans to organize an Idaho
potato harvest promotion,
including information about
Idaho products on its litera-
ture and offering discounted
rates on products to its cus-
tomers.
“Idaho is still king,” add-
ed Scott Mealwitz, produce
manager with Sysco Cleve-
land. “That’s what most of
our customers want.”
IPC spends under $2,500
per domestic participant on
its tours, and will invite food
bloggers to visit Idaho next
fall. A couple of weeks ago,
Odiorne said IPC hosted in-
ternational buyers from the
Pacific Rim on a similar tour,
which has already resulted in
a large purchase of dehydrat-
ed spuds by one of the partic-
ipants.
Food service professionals
tour Wada Farms in Pingree,
Idaho on Sept. 27 during a tour
sponsored by the Idaho Potato
Commission.
John O’Connell/Capital Press
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