Use the pulldown menus to visit other Food Central sections:
Recipes ---------- Today Recipe Swap	Resources ---------- Additives Alcohol Beer Beverages Coffee Dairy Fat Fruit Grains Herbs Italian Meat Organic Seafood Snacks Southern Sweets Tea Veggies Vitamins	Restaurants ---------- Atlanta Baltimore Boston Chicago Dallas Denver Detroit Fort Worth Houston Las Vegas Los Angeles Miami Minneapolis New Orleans NYC Orlando Philly Phoenix Pittsburgh Salt Lake San Antonio San Diego San Fran Seattle St. Louis Wash, D.C. ---------- Amsterdam Athens Bangkok Beijing Berlin Brussels Cairo Copenhagen Dublin Florence Frankfurt Hong Kong London Madrid Mex City Montreal Moscow Munich Nairobi Paris Prague Rio Rome Singapore St. Pburg. Sydney Tokyo Toronto Vienna Zurich

VIDEO CNN's Rusty Dornin reports on the flavorful crop of grapes expected this year in California's wine country. Real 28K 80K Windows Media 28K 80K

MESSAGE BOARD What are your favorite wines?

From Correspondent Rusty Dornin

(CNN) -- There's just enough sunshine, but not enough warm weather. The result is a late grape havest in California's coastal wine producing regions.

"The cool weather has given us a long balanced ripening period and what that does is seal in the delicate flavor of the grape and increases the varietal character," said Mike Benzinger of Benziger Vineyards.

In the year of La Nina, vintners say the cooler weather means the crop will be smaller and the flavors more intense than the grapes produced during El Nino last year.

Right now, vintners need a blast of warm weather to speed up the ripening process -- otherwise, drastic measures may be necessary.

Fewer grapes this year means wine drinkers can expect to pay more their wine

The Benzinger vineyard, 40 percent of the grapes will be cut before they are ripe. By reducing the amount of grapes each vine carries, it accerates ripening.

That is $16,000 to $18,000 worth of grapes that we will just drop on the ground," Benzinger said. "But again, the goal here is to get the grapes that remain to perfect ripeness."

Many of the wines produced at Benzinger sell for more than $10 a bottle. For the last 5 years, wine prices have climbed about 6 to 7 percent a year. Fewer grapes this year means wine drinkers can expect to pay even more for their favorite vintages.

"Grapes that are grown here on the coastal areas are in very, very high demand -- there's not enough of them," Benzinger said. "That supply and demand has kept prices up and kept competition for grapes very high among wineries."