ROANOKE, Va. — An illicit nighttime harvest this week stripped Montgomery County’s Firefly Hill Vineyards of almost its entire crop of grapes, co-owner Allison Dunkenberger said Wednesday.

“We still can’t wrap our heads around this … We’re just in the grieving process,” Dunkenberger said about the loss of her family’s grapes mere hours before she, her husband, and friends and relatives were to begin trimming the fruit from carefully tended vines.

Whoever took the grapes had to have been someone who knew something about the winery’s operations — the grapes are not visible from nearby North Fork Road, she noted. But who? “It’s not a cutthroat industry,” Dunkenberger insisted.

Her husband, Black Dog Salvage operations director and former Montgomery County School Board member David Dunkenberger, was more forceful in a Facebook post: “To the pieces of cowardly, human scum that came in the night and stole the grapes from my vines,” he wrote. “I want to thank you for proving our society has hit rock bottom. May you die a slow and agonizingly painful death so that when you are writhing in pain someone will be kind enough to offer you a drink of wine so you know for what you suffer.”

According to the Dunkenbergers, someone — or rather, a knowledgeable team of someones — entered Firefly Hill’s vineyard in the Ironto section of Montgomery County on Monday night and removed 2 to 2½ tons of grapes from 2,500 vines growing on 3½ acres.

The thieves cut them carefully and quickly, Allison Dunkenberger said. While the Dunkenbergers planned to take several days to harvest, working with friends and family and pausing for processing, the thieves accomplished the job between sundown and dawn.

The Dunkenbergers live in Salem, but Allison Dunkenberger said she was at the winery during the day Monday and the grapes definitely were on the vines. When David Dunkenberger arrived early Tuesday morning ahead of the planned harvest, the fruit was nearly all gone, she said.

The bandits would have needed one large truck or a number of smaller ones to carry the grapes away, she said.

On the Firefly Hill’s Facebook page, a photo of six lugs — the plastic totes used to haul grapes — showed all that the winery said was left of its crop, less than 200 pounds of grapes.

Allison Dunkenberger said the value of the stolen fruit was about $20,000 or $25,000, but if the time and materials used in caring for them was included, the loss was closer to $50,000. Firefly Hill’s insurance does not cover theft of the crop, she said.

Dunkenberger said that the family planted the vines 12 years ago and gathered the grapes each year.

“We’ll keep taking care of the vines,” she said, and likely will resume operations sometime in the future.

But for now, she said, Firefly Hill is closed.

Investigator Don Link of the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office asked that anyone with information about the theft call him at 540-382-6915, ext. 44421.

Link

Look for some really fat foxes.

I remember reading about produce thefts a few years ago in California. Thieves would wait until the produce was loaded onto trailers,and still the trailers.

Hard to guard your property 24-7 especially if you do not live there.

quote:

Black Dog Salvage

https://www.blackdogsalvage.com/

I thought I recognized the name, they have a TV show on the salvage business...

quote:

Originally posted by wcb6092:
I remember reading about produce thefts a few years ago in California. Thieves would wait until the produce was loaded onto trailers,and still the trailers.

Hard to guard your property 24-7 especially if you do not live there.

Avocado groves get hit in San Diego fairly often and growers have learned to be alert.

"Really Fat Foxes" - Oxymoron, I think.

quote:

Originally posted by JALLEN:

quote:

Originally posted by wcb6092:
I remember reading about produce thefts a few years ago in California. Thieves would wait until the produce was loaded onto trailers,and still the trailers.

Hard to guard your property 24-7 especially if you do not live there.

Avocado groves get hit in San Diego fairly often and growers have learned to be alert.

Yes. My grandfather who had groves in the north county area locked the gate on the main road and at the entrance to his property every night. Along with that he lived on the property and always had dogs roaming free that would bark at anything. We paid attention to them.

On the property he didn't live on, he had friends that did as well as the workers who lived on the property so they were able to watch over things.

There has to be more to this story. How many people have the knowledge and ability to harvest grapes from 2,500 vines in one evening? Was no one at home at the time?

If this website photo is accurate, the vines look fairly close to the house.



https://www.landandfarm.com/pr...l_Vineyards-2088748/

Where and to whom does one sell 2.5 tons of grapes in the Virginia area?? California would be easier because of the plethora of processors all over the state.

Professional harvest crews could clean that vineyard out in no time

Very sad. This is someone's livelihood. I hope the thieves are caught and sued for everything they have.

What are they suppose to do with all those grapes? What legitimate winery would buy them?

I'll bet the thievery is more than just for monetary gain. Maybe they made enemies with somebody...

This is in my backyard and it's the first I heard of it. The Black Dog Salvage guys are great people.
I agree that it had to be "professionals" but where to sell it would be a problem as the vineyard business in VA, while actually quite large (fifth largest in the US) is still a small community.

quote:

Originally posted by darkest2000:
What are they suppose to do with all those grapes? What legitimate winery would buy them?

I'll bet the thievery is more than just for monetary gain. Maybe they made enemies with somebody...

You drive the truckloads to the winemaker and sell the harvest. Most likely another vineyard would be the culprit vs. joe blow.

That said, this is not far from the Moonshine Capital of the US. Maybe the boys from Franklin County are working up a special batch of grape brandy out in the woods.

I hope the thieves are caught - they should pay dearly for destroying someone's livelihood

I wonder how much $50,000 in costs would have ended up being if the grapes had been made into wine. The real loss has to be a great deal more.

also, if they weren't harvested correctly they may have damaged the vines themselves

sounds to me like it was done by professionals

I read this in WDBJ's website, unbelievable to me, for that much (2tons) of grapes to be stolen at night.

Just curious as to how many people it would take to harvest that much and how long..

I swear, thievery has no limits!