Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, May 25, 1994                   TAG: 9405250148
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: C-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: SANDRA BROWN KELLY
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

IT'S NOT A PEACH OF A YEAR FOR SOME ORCHARDS, VINEYARDS

"When she was good, she was very, very good; when she was bad she was horrid."

That says it for Virginia's peach crop this year.

The Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services last week reported that 35 percent of the crop is in "very poor" condition, another 35 percent is in "fair" condition and what's left is rated "good" to "excellent."

"The people who've got peaches have got good peaches," said Kevin Harding of the state's Agricultural Statistics Department.

But the viticulturists might not know yet what they'll have to keep the state's wine industry going.

According to the March-April newsletter from Virginia Tech's Viticulture Extension Research Center in Winchester, the state's vineyards also were damaged by the January cold that hurt the peaches. Depending upon the variety, the damage could cut production by more than 50 percent or to almost zilch.

Researcher Tony Wolf said a "cold tender" Chardonnay might have been reduced by as little as 10 percent in the Charlottesville area but may be entirely gone in Northern Virginia counties, where temperatures fell to minus 11 on Jan. 19.

When you're eating a peach or sipping a Virginia chardonnay, the economics of fruit crops seem far away. But the farmers who grow these crops shiver at talk of extremes in heat or cold or rainfall.

The state produces a weekly Weather Crop report showing the impact of nature on commodities such as corn, alfalfa, peaches and tobacco. Vineyard crops aren't included in the weekly update, but they're becoming increasingly important to the state's economy.

People aren't just growing those grapes and bottling the results so you can have halcyon days, or nights. Economists say Virginia's farm wineries represent a total investment of $40 million, have annual revenues of about $65 million and generate nearly 1,400 jobs. They also contribute $3.1 million in direct and indirect taxes, according to a report by Thomas Johnson and Ernest Wade of Virginia Tech's department of agricultural and applied economics.

The growth of the Virginia wine industry dates only to 1972, though the first House of Burgesses in the New World passed a law in 1619 requiring all settlers to plant a vineyard. While we're nowhere near that law's intent, the state has 42 farm wineries and grapes are Virginia's16th largest crop.

|n n| Brooks Fashions, the women's specialty shop chain with stores at Tanglewood and Valley View malls, is going out of business. A spokesman in the New York headquarters of the privately owned company said a liquidation company is selling the remaining merchandise.

Brooks filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization last June and closed 290 stores - including one in New River Valley - in August. The remaining 231 stores were making money, the spokesman said, but not enough to salvage the ailing operation.

The chain got in trouble in the late '80s, when it had more than 900 stores. It began to lose stores from then on.

Retail businesses always must change or risk falling behind consumer demand. Radio Shack stores are among those changing. The division of Tandy Corp. is starting to add repair services for name-brand electronics and computers.

The service won't be available in Western Virginia until fall, but the company has 116 service centers nationwide.