Cherries are to Traverse City what slot machines are to Las Vegas—lifeblood. But when a community’s lifeblood starts sapping its life force, it’s time for a rethink. According to Good Harbor winemaker Sam Simpson, the cherry industry has had a rough decade. Battered by weather woes and oppressive GAP certification requirements, the growers remain far down a food chain overlorded by cherry packers and cherry distributors.

Simpson believes that over the next ten years, you won’t see as many Traverse City cherry tree replants.

“You get thirty to thirty-five years worth of production from a typical cherry tree,” he says. “There was a big push to expand in the Seventies and Eighties; those trees are currently running out of steam. The only farms I see gung-ho these days are big cooperatives—thanks to economies of scale—and very small operations where the owner has a day job and works the orchards on his own time without necessarily accounting for what that’s worth. For mid-sized companies, it makes sense to plant the land to something more profitable—or sell up.”

Read the entire article “Good Harbor Vineyards and the Dialectics of Cherry Wine” on examiner.com

Photo credit: Good Harbor Vineyards by photoshoparama