Pine Island Cranberry was very pleased last week to host a visit from George Giorno of Ocean Spray, who brought along business partners Rich Rosen and Ed Machala of White Rose Wholesale Distributors and Terry Brown, Ron Camporeale, and Bill Gibbons of Acosta Sales Agency. While George’s guests work closely with Ocean Spray on marketing and distribution, they had never actually seen a cranberry harvest before and were, to a man, thrilled to be here. It’s always a pleasure to speak with people who are genuinely enthusiastic about what they do and are so willing to completely immerse themselves in a new experience.

Their day started with a chat from Bill, who gave them a brief history of Pine Island and a bit of background on what they were all about to see.

Then it was off for a whirlwind tour of our harvest! Bill and Cristina took them everywhere: our guests saw how we manage our water, how our knocking crews get the berries off the vines, how our gathering crews collect the crop, and how the packing house gets them ready for the next stop on their tour: the Ocean Spray receiving station. Dan Schiffhauer walked them through the process there, and they finished up with a tour in Bordentown, that essentially, as George says, “filled the bottle. The day was a great education for us all.”

George continued: “For me personally, this was one of those days as an Ocean Spray employee where I drove home a little taller in my seat knowing that behind every bottle of Ocean Spray juice there lies an army of great people creating the best Cranberry products in the world – and what a blessing and honor it is for me to be a part of this fantastic cooperative lineage.”

*photos courtesy Terry Brown