Arkansas Vineyards Have Roller Coaster Year
by July 2, 2001 9:57 am 85 views
The wine is fine, but for the juice grape farmers in Arkansas it’s been a sour year.
The Altus vineyards in the Arkansas River Valley have produced one of their best crops in years, said Justin R. Morris, an international expert on wine production and a professor of food science at the University of Arkansas.
However, farmers in northwest Arkansas, where the Concord — or food grapes — are grown for juices, have not been so lucky.
“It’s been disastrous,” Morris said of the freeze, frost and hail damage to the vineyards in Fayetteville, Lowell, Springdale and Tontitown. “It’s been pretty devastating, the worst in a long time. I would venture to say that everything north of [the university] received heavy damage. It’s just been a tough year weather-wise for juice grapes.”
In 2000, the state produced 4,200 tons of Concord and wine grapes valued at $2.2 million, nearly all of which came from northwest Arkansas and the Arkansas River Valley. That was down slightly from a 4,900-ton yield valued at $2.3 million in 1999.