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October 5, 2018 CapitalPress.com 3 Napa Valley winery rejects 2,000 tons of S. Oregon wine grapes ‘Smoke taint’ blamed for decision By GEORGE PLAVEN Capital Press Southern Oregon wine- growers may be on the hook for millions of dollars worth of unsold grapes after a Califor- nia winery suddenly canceled contracts with at least 15 dif- ferent suppliers in the Rogue Valley. Copper Cane Wines & Provisions, based in the Napa Valley, notified growers as re- cently as Sept. 28 that it would not buy wine grapes purport- edly contaminated by “smoke taint” from this year’s wild- fires across the region. John Pratt, president of the Rogue Valley Winegrowers Association and owner of Ce- lestina Vineyard in Medford, said Copper Cane rejected approximately 2,000 tons of grapes valued at $4 million, leaving the fruit to rot on the vine. “I think most everybody was stunned,” Pratt said. “It was devastating.” While the cancellations were ostensibly due to smoke exposure, Pratt said vineyard owners did their own testing and found that the levels of guaiacol and methylguaiacol — compounds released by burning wood that indicate smoke taint in fruit — were below the level considered to be a cause for concern. Though smoky skies lin- gered over the Rogue Valley this season, Pratt said it was mostly higher up in the at- mosphere, and not the dense ground smoke winegrowers normally associated with dan- gerous smoke taint. “Everybody feels very strongly that’s just a bogus smokescreen scapegoat rea- son for rejecting the fruit,” Capital Press File Copper Cane Wines & Provi- sions, of California, has canceled contracts to buy at least 2,000 tons of wine grapes from Southern Oregon growers due to smoke taint from this year’s wildfires. Pratt said. A representative of Copper Cane did not return messages for comment. The affected growers met Sept. 28 in Medford to share information and discuss their options moving forward. Be- cause the cancellations came just before harvest, Pratt said that gives them virtually no time to find new buyers before the fruit becomes overripe. “A few people said they had found a home for some of the fruit they hadn’t been able to pick for Copper Cane, but most everybody said it was worthless,” Pratt said. Two wineries in the Willa- mette Valley are now reach- ing out to find homes for the stranded grapes. Willamette Valley Vineyards and King Estate Winery recently sent an SOS to see if any fellow win- eries can take on extra volume. Jim Bernau, founder and CEO of Willamette Valley Vineyards in Turner, Ore., said the winery bought an extra 8 tons of Merlot at full contract price, and is willing to put up the money to help others do the same. “This could break the backs of some of those Southern Or- egon growers,” Bernau said. Willamette Valley Vine- yards already buys grapes from Southern Oregon for its Griffin Creek brand. Bernau said they tested this year’s grapes at an independent lab, ETS Laboratories in Newberg, Ore., to check for smoke taint, and results show the fruit is in good shape. “It doesn’t concern us at all,” Bernau said. Sam Tannahill, co-founder of A to Z Wineworks in New- berg, also buys 3,000 tons of wine grapes from the Rogue Valley. He said there does appear to be isolated pockets of smoke taint in the region, however the amount seems to be relatively low. “Certainly, this year was definitely less intense than last year,” Tannahill said. “This is very isolated for us this year.” Copper Cane is already gaining notoriety in Oregon over allegations of mislead- ing labels that misrepresent the state’s valuable American Viticultural Areas, or AVAs. Industry leaders recently tes- tified about the controversy during state Legislative Days before the House Interim Committee on Economic De- velopment and Trade. Copper Cane denies it is doing anything wrong, and is quick to point out that all its labels have received approval from the federal Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bu- reau. The winery did provide bottling, transfer and produc- tion records for seven wines to the Oregon Liquor Control Commission, which is looking into whether the labels meet state law. Rep. Pam Marsh, D-Ash- land, serves as committee chairwoman, and said they take the allegations seriously. “These appellations are really important to our mar- keting,” Marsh said. “The la- beling issues are pretty critical, because we want to grow our region as a destination. To do that, a destination has to mean something.” Uninhabitable ‘critical habitat’ debated before Supreme Court Don Jenkins/Capital Press Long Beach, Wash., cranberry farmers Malcolm and Ardell McPhail churn a bog Sept. 25 to shake loose cranberries. A cranberry surplus is projected to persist even after volume controls. Dusky gopher frog at center of controversy that may have broader implications By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI Capital Press Cranberry surplus still high with harvest underway Industry waits for trade numbers By DON JENKINS Capital Press U.S. cranberry farmers are harvesting what’s expected to be another large crop, even as the industry tries to cut a price-depressing surplus. For a second straight year, fruit handlers must withhold some berries, a USDA-ap- proved response to an inven- tory that had grown bigger than annual sales. The indus- try’s Cranberry Marketing Committee, which requested volume controls, projects the supply will exceed the de- mand in the coming year by 66 percent. Long Beach, Wash., farm- er Malcolm McPhail said he has seen the price he receives for a 100-pound barrel fall by about $13 from $45 in the past two years. “I anticipate we’re going in be in the low 30s for another year or two, hopefully not longer than that,” he said. The surplus built up over several years as American farmers grew bumper crops and Canadian farmers stepped up production. The marketing committee predicts this year’s U.S. harvest will be near 2016’s record. While U.S. consump- tion has been flat, exports of cranberries have been rising for several years. New tariffs threaten that trend, according to the Cranberry Institute, an association of handlers. The tariffs by Canada, Chi- na, the European Union and Mexico responded to duties enacted by the U.S. on steel and aluminum imports. It’s widely assumed cranberries are a favorite target for retal- iatory tariffs because House Speaker Paul Ryan represents Wisconsin, by far the top cranberry-producing state. The tariffs were imposed between June 4 and July 6. The total value of cranberry exports actually increased in July to $33.6 million com- pared to $29.1 million in July 2017, according to figures compiled by the USDA’s Eco- nomic Research Service. Month-to-month numbers normally fluctuate, and it’s too soon to tell how the tariffs will affect cranberry farmers or whether the industry can increase sales in countries that haven’t imposed tariffs, Cranberry Institute Executive Director Terry Humfeld said Thursday. “You really can’t draw conclusions from one month of data. I think we need a number of months of data to really estimate what the im- pact is,” he said. Governor, senators request additional relief for ranchers By GEORGE PLAVEN Capital Press Ranchers in north-cen- tral Oregon are just begin- ning to recover from a dev- astating wildfire season that saw hundreds of thousands of acres of dry grass and rangeland go up in flames. To assist livestock pro- ducers who lost vital grazing pastures, USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue authorized emergency grazing on Con- servation Reserve Program, or CRP, land through Sept. 30 in Wasco, Sherman and Wheeler counties. CRP is a federal conservation pro- gram administered by the Farm Service Agency that pays farmers to take envi- ronmentally sensitive land out of agricultural produc- tion for 10-15 years. Now, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown and U.S. Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley are asking Perdue to extend the CRP deadline through Feb. 28, 2019, while also ex- panding emergency grazing and haying to neighboring Gilliam County, which re- cently sustained a 50,000- acre blaze. Brown, Wyden and Merkley, all Democrats, sent a letter Sept. 26 to Per- due asking for additional relief, and to consider any other programs to address soil erosion that may affect both farmland and fish hab- itat. Justices from the U.S. Supreme Court appeared to have differing opinions on whether “critical habitat” for an endangered species can be designated in an area it can’t inhabit without signif- icant changes. The oral arguments held on Oct. 1 centered on po- tential dusky gopher frog habitat in a Louisiana forest, but agriculture and property rights advocates believe the case may have broader En- dangered Species Act impli- cations for landowners. In 2012, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service desig- nated critical habitat for the amphibian on 1,500 acres of forest owned by Weyer- haeuser and other landown- ers, which they fear reduces property values and inhibits housing development. “The immediate effect of this overlay of a critical hab- itat on this 1,500 acres is a diminution in value of tens of millions of dollars. That is what it says in the agen- cy’s economic analysis, that there is an immediate loss in value,” said Timothy Bishop, attorney for Weyerhaeuser. Not only is that acreage currently unoccupied by the frog, but the upland areas would need to be substan- tially modified to allow the species to survive in the area again. However, the federal gov- ernment has found the prop- erty contains five seasonal ponds that would prove es- sential to the frog’s recovery if landowners eventually co- operated on restoring diverse groundcover to the area. Weyerhaeuser filed a law- U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service The dusky gopher frog is the focus of a case before the U.S. Supreme Court. suit against the critical hab- itat designation, claiming it would impede ground-dis- turbing activities requiring federal permits, but a federal judge and the 5th U.S. Cir- cuit Court of Appeals upheld the decision. Critics of the designation are concerned that farmland receiving federal loans or fi- nancial assistance could be affected by a similar action, as could publicly owned rangeland and irrigation structures. Associate Justice Elena Kagan, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, said it would be a “counterin- tuitive result that the statute would prefer extinction of the species to the designation of an area which requires only certain reasonable im- provements in order to sup- port the species.” Bishop responded that there’s a difference be- tween an unoccupied area that could serve as habitat — which may be designat- ed as “critical” — versus an “unoccupied area that’s not habitat,” which goes further than the law allows. Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, also an Obama appointee, suggested that perhaps it’s enough for the “species to survive, albeit not robustly” for an area to still qualify as critical habi- tat. “I don’t know that un- occupied has to be an opti- mal survival place, and if it doesn’t have to be optimal, what would otherwise be a minimum?” she said. Chief Justice John Rob- erts, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, questioned how far the gov- ernment could go in deter- mining the necessary chang- es for an area to qualify as critical habitat. “If you have the ephem- eral ponds in Alaska, you could build a giant green- house and plant the longleaf pines and the frog could live there,” he said. “In other words, there has to be pre- sumably some limit on what restoration you would say is required.” Deputy Solicitor General Edwin Kneedler, represent- ing the government, said that only “reasonable ef- forts” were needed to restore the uplands surrounding the ponds, since the area was once occupied by the frog before logging and forest management began. Kneedler said the ques- tion of “whether it is capable of supporting a population is basically a scientific one” that’s dependent on land characteristics rather than landowner intentions. Such efforts wouldn’t likely be reasonable if the area had “a shopping center there or a housing develop- ment there,” he said. Weekly fieldwork report Ore. Item/description (Source: USDA, NASS; NOAA) • Days suitable for fieldwork (As of Oct. 2) 6.9 • Topsoil moisture, surplus 0 • Topsoil moisture, percent short 90% • Subsoil moisture, surplus 0 • Subsoil moisture, percent short 87% • Precipitation probability 33% Below/ (6-10 day outlook as of Oct. 2) 40% Above Wash. Idaho Calif. 6.8 0 70% 0 61% 6.9 0 68% 2% 61% 7 0 70% 0 75% 33-60% Above Normal/ 40% Above 33% Below/ 33% Above
