Michigan had 455 commercial grape growers at the end of the 2011 season, according to recently compiled results from the 2011 Michigan Fruit Survey.

Almost all of Michigan’s grapes are of the varieties used mainly for juice, Concord and Niagara.

There were 15,000 acres of grapes at the end of 2011, up 200 acres from 2006, when the last survey was taken.

While the state’s grape acreage grew only 200 acres from 2006 to 2011, acreage in wine grapes increased by 545 acres, from 1,270 to 1,765 acres for vinifera and from 625 to 675 acres for hybrids. Concord acreage fell from 9,350 to 9,030 and Niagara acreage fell from 3,520 to 3,480.

There were 670 acres of grapes planted from 2007 through 2011.

The top two counties in grape acres, Berrien and Van Buren in southwest Michigan, accounted for 82 percent of all acres. There were 1,450 acres of grapes in the Grand Traverse Bay region of northwest Michigan, nearly three times the area of a decade earlier, and all of them wine grapes. Riesling was the most widely planted wine grape variety.