Vintage Table Treat Grape Crate Label 🍎 Linda Loma Ranch Visalia California, Thompson Seedless & King, NOS

👑 Linda Loma Ranch Crowns Its Grapes

When a family grape ranch outside Visalia, California wanted its Thompson Seedless to stand out in a crowded market, it reached for royalty. The Linda Loma Ranch called its grapes Table Treat and crowned the brand with a jolly, white-bearded king, beaming out from beneath a jeweled golden crown -- a promise, in a single glance, that this was fruit fit for a king's table. This is that label, pasted once on the end of a wooden grape lug, and it still radiates good cheer.

What you are looking at is the Table Treat grape lug label of the Linda Loma Ranch, Visalia, California -- an 11 1/2 by 3 1/2 inch horizontal grape-lug label, packed for "Thompson Seedless" grapes at a "Minimum Net Weight 28 Pounds," marked "Produce of U.S.A." Everything below is drawn from the label itself, from the photographs, and from what can honestly be learned about the ranch behind it.

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🍇 Who Linda Loma Ranch Was -- Honestly

The label names its people plainly: "Linda Loma Ranch, Growers & Packers, Visalia, California," with a small red diamond seal reading "Jenan Bros, Growers - Packers, Quality Fruits." Visalia sits in Tulare County, in the heart of California's San Joaquin Valley table-grape country, and Linda Loma Ranch was a family grape grower and packer there -- the Jenan family, whose name still farms the Visalia area today. Their Table Treat label survives in the collected record of California grape-crate labels, catalogued among the great archive holdings of the state's fruit ephemera.

Beyond that, we will be honest with you: the Linda Loma Ranch left a light documentary footprint. It was not a Sunkist or a giant shipping exchange; it was the kind of independent family ranch whose story now survives mostly in the label it printed and the family name that still works the ground. That, to us, is its own quiet history -- a real grower, a real brand, a real crate of grapes -- and we would rather tell you plainly what is known than invent a pedigree the ranch never claimed.

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👑 The Table Treat Brand and Its King

The king is the whole delight of it. He is an old, round-faced, ruddy-cheeked monarch with a flowing snow-white beard and a wide, merry, open-mouthed laugh -- so jolly that he carries an unmistakable echo of Old Saint Nicholas, though he is unmistakably a king. On his head sits a tall golden crown, banded with pearls, set with red and green jewels and topped by a small cross. A deep, pleated Elizabethan ruff frames his face, and at the upper left floats a heraldic shield bearing a golden rampant lion on a red field. The brand name TABLE and TREAT is set in big cream-white block letters to either side of him, all against a rich red ground with a dark circle behind the head. Down the left run the ranch's lines; to the right, "Thompson Seedless" and "Minimum Net Weight 28 Pounds." It is generous, festive, storybook design -- a small grower's bid to make its fruit feel like a coronation.

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🍇 Thompson Seedless: The Grape in the Box

The label tells us plainly what the ranch packed: Thompson Seedless grapes, 28 pounds to the lug. Thompson Seedless is the pale-green, sweet, seedless grape that became the backbone of California's table-grape and raisin industry -- the classic "green grape" of American fruit bowls -- and it shipped by the millions of lugs out of the San Joaquin Valley. Naming the variety and the net weight right on the label is the kind of concrete detail that grounds Table Treat in its real working purpose: not decoration for its own sake, but a shipping billboard for a specific crop from a specific ranch.

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📅 A Word About Its Age

The honest way to place this label is by what it shows. Its address reads simply "Visalia, California," with no ZIP code -- and since the Post Office did not introduce five-digit ZIP codes until July 1963, a grower's label printed without one is consistent with a date before the mid-1960s. That, together with the rich lithographed style, the storybook king and the wooden-lug grape trade it served, points to the mid-century, and the label survives in the record dated around the 1950s. We describe it as circa the 1950s -- an honest approximation, since the label itself prints no year.

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📦 Why It Is Still Crisp: New Old Stock

Bright labels like this survive because the wooden lug itself went away. Through the 1950s and 1960s pre-printed cardboard cartons replaced wooden crates and lugs, and packing houses were left with stacks of paper labels never pasted onto a single box. This Table Treat is one of those unused survivors: the lug it was made for never came. Its reds are deep, its creams and golds clean, and -- as the reverse photographs show -- the back is a plain, unmarked cream sheet with only the faint ghost of the front print showing through. No paste, no crate wear, no grime.

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🔍 Condition, Exactly as Pictured

• 🟢 Unused new old stock. Never applied to a lug -- no paste on the reverse, no mounting damage, no trimming.
• 🔴 Bright, original color. The red ground, the king's flesh and gold crown, the cream lettering and the heraldic shield all read strong and clean, as shown.
• 📄 Clean blank back. The reverse is a plain cream sheet with only the front faintly ghosting through.
• 📏 Size: an 11 1/2 by 3 1/2 inch horizontal grape-lug label.
• 🔎 Honest age: ordinary light handling for a stored vintage paper label; offered exactly as pictured, nothing added, nothing hidden.

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🖼️ How to Live With It

• 🎨 Frame it as single graphic art -- the long, narrow shape suits a kitchen wall, a wine nook or a shelf edge.
• 🍇 Build a wine-and-grape gallery with it, beside other vintage vineyard, grape and winery art in a dining room or bar.
• 👑 Bring it out at the holidays: the merry crowned king reads wonderfully as festive, almost Saint-Nicholas cheer on a mantel.
• 🎁 Give it as a real, affordable antique-paper gift for a wine lover, a grape grower, a graphic-design fan or a collector of storybook and royal imagery.

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👑 Who This Belongs With

Table Treat has a few natural homes: the wine-and-grape enthusiast who loves a genuine old California vineyard-country piece; the crate-label collector who values an unused Thompson Seedless example with a specific ranch and packer named on its face; the lover of festive, storybook and royal imagery charmed by that laughing king; and the gift-giver after something warm, old and affordable. For any of them, this is one specific survivor of a small Visalia grape ranch, offered exactly as it lasted.

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❓ Questions Worth Answering

Who grew and packed this?

Linda Loma Ranch -- the Jenan family -- growers and packers at Visalia, Tulare County, California. This is their Table Treat brand.

Is this an original label or a reproduction?

An original, genuine vintage lithographed grape-lug label -- unused new old stock, never applied to a lug. Not a modern reprint.

Is the figure Santa Claus or a king?

He is a king -- crowned, ruffed and set beside a heraldic lion shield -- though his rosy, white-bearded, laughing face carries a distinct echo of Old Saint Nicholas.

What grapes did it dress, and why circa 1950s?

Thompson Seedless, 28 pounds net, printed on the label. It carries no ZIP code (those began July 1963), and the record dates it around the 1950s; the label prints no year, so we give an honest approximation.

Back, size and quantity?

Clean and blank with the front faintly ghosting through; 11 1/2 by 3 1/2 inches; one label, offered exactly as pictured.

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🌞 Visalia, Grapes, and a Family Ranch

To feel the label fully, picture where it came from. Visalia sits in Tulare County, in the warm heart of California's San Joaquin Valley, where long summers and deep soil made table grapes one of the region's signature crops. Linda Loma Ranch was one of the countless family grape operations that fed that trade -- growers and packers who put up their own fruit, gave it a brand, and sent it off to compete in far-off markets. We cannot tell you a long, documented corporate history for the ranch, because it does not appear to survive, and we will not invent one; what we can tell you is that its Table Treat brand was real, its Thompson Seedless was real, and the Jenan family name on the packing seal still farms the Visalia area. Sometimes the most honest story a small grower leaves behind is exactly this: a beautiful label, a family name, and a crate of grapes bound for someone's table.

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✨ Why It Matters

Some old things are collected because they are rare; this one is a pleasure because it is real, warm and specific. It is a genuine survivor of the Linda Loma Ranch -- a small Visalia family grape grower that crowned its Thompson Seedless with a laughing king and sent it to market as a treat fit for royalty. Spared the crate it was printed for, it reaches you decades later still bright and unused, carrying no invented pedigree and needing none. What it offers is the thing itself: a named California grower, a joyful king, and a framable slice of the Valley's grape country.

📋 What Is Printed On This Label

Every line of type on the sheet, transcribed from the label itself rather than paraphrased:

• TABLE TREAT
• PRODUCE OF U. S. A.
• Linda Loma Ranch
• GROWERS & PACKERS
• VISALIA, CALIFORNIA
• GROWERS PACKERS QUALITY FRUITS (ringing the diamond seal)
• JENAN Bros. (inside the diamond)
• THOMPSON SEEDLESS GRAPES
• MINIMUM NET WEIGHT 28 POUNDS

Printer: no lithographer's imprint, form number or plate code appears anywhere on this sheet. None is claimed here.

Packer, not printer. The firm named on the label is the house that grew, packed or shipped the fruit. It did not make the label — commercial lithographers did that, and where one signed the sheet the imprint is quoted above.

The heraldic shield. Above the crowned king's left shoulder sits a shield charged with a gold lion rampant on red. The cream diamond seal at centre-right carries JENAN Bros. inside a red splash, ringed by GROWERS / PACKERS / QUALITY / FRUITS.