If the California wine industry wants to survive, it must use less water
Some 80% of California’s water goes to agriculture.
Vineyards gulp a lot of water, but the wine production process uses considerable amounts at other stages too, largely to clean the production facility. Compared with other forms of beverage production, winemaking does not look very water-efficient: Coca-Cola used 1.84 liters of water for every liter of Coke produced in 2020, while wineries use about 7 to 16 liters of water per liter of wine, according to the journal Water Science & Technology.
No winemaker could have caused the sky to rain more last year. But that sentiment obscures the opportunity that human beings have to mitigate the situation.