Grapes blessed; harvest begins in earnest

ACAMPO
August 9, 2006 12:55pm

The Central Valley 2006 wine grape harvest is off to its “official” start with the traditional blessing of the grapes Wednesday.

“It starts the year off with remembering what this is all about,” says Brad Alderson, vice president and general manager of Woodbridge Winery in Acampo where the event took place.

Woodbridge is part of Constellation Brands Inc. (NYSE: STZ) of Fairport, N.Y., which says it is the world’s largest producer and marketer of wine.

Mr. Alderson says the blessing ceremony started in 1979 when the original family-owned business was bought by Robert Mondavi.

He says it’s become more important as Mondavi was absorbed into Constellation and the parent company has grown over the years.

“We really are about taking something that grows in the ground, that’s cared for by a lot of hands working very passionately for it and [who] get it to the winery where a lot more hands turn it into wine and put it into the bottle. All that works together because of a power greater than us that we need to thank,” he says.

“Business is business and money is money. But at the end of the day, we’re still growing a grape that God gave us. It reminds you that this is still a very basic thing that’s been going on for thousands of years,” Mr. Alderson says.

The actual blessing ceremony, which halted work at the massive winery north of Lodi, was handled by Rev. Harmon Skillen of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Stockton.

After prayers, a Bible reading and the sprinkling of holy water on a gondola filled with Sauvignon Blanc grapes, the grapes were dumped into an auger to be conveyed into the plant for de-stemming and crushing, beginning the process of being made into wine.