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