Water & Wine

Water and Wine is a partnership with grape growers in Northern California to enhance instream flows and salmonid habitat and fulfill agricultural water demands in Wine Country.  It has three elements:

• Water Supply Solutions:  Developing physical projects and better water management solutions with landowners -- such as off-stream winter storage ponds, coordinating the timing of diversions, and improvements in irrigation efficiency -- to improve water supply reliability and reduce water withdrawals from streams during the summer and fall, when salmon and steelhead need water the most. We’re also working with multiple landowners to identify projects and develop performance-based stream flow objectives and stream management plans so that groups of water users can cooperatively manage diversions to achieve more cumulative protection and more cost-effective results than any water user could achieve alone.
  
• Stream Restoration: Removing fish passage barriers, planting streamside vegetation, and restoring stream channels.
  
• Public Awareness: Promoting industry leaders to consumers who demand a wine consistent with their values, publicizing sound stewardship practiced by these landowners to create incentives for more grape growers to engage in land and water stewardship, and generating public support for conservation.  See www.whywild.org [1].

Low stream flow in summer and fall adversely affects salmon and steelhead rearing habitat and leads to unreliable water supplies for growers.  We are bringing together agricultural interests, water development engineers and attorneys, urban water users, other conservation groups, state and federal water agencies, and local governments to work out practical solutions to these problems.  TU and the wine industry learned that we have a common interest in practices such as the use of stored, rainy-season water for irrigation as an alternative to summertime pumping from salmon streams.  We are partnering to make it happen. 

Trout Unlimited and its Wine Industry partners launched the Water and Wine program on March 19, 2008 on the banks of Wine Creek in Sonoma County. Water and Wine participants account for more than 30 generations and 725 years of experience of agricultural stewardship:

Alderbrook Winery
Bevill Family Vineyards
Cadd Ranch
Jackson Family Wines
Mauritson Vineyards and Winery
Michel-Schlumberger Wine Estate
Mounts Vineyards and Winery
Nelson Vineyards
Quivira Vineyards
Robert Young Vineyards
Rodney Strong Vineyards
Rued Vineyards and Winery
Simi Winery
Steelhead Wines
Weinstock Vineyards
Wine Creek Vineyard
Redwood Empire Chapter, Trout Unlimited
Sonoma County Salmonid Coalition
Sonoma County Winegrape Commission
United Winegrowers for Sonoma County

Trout Unlimited invites other grapegrowers and winemakers to join us in conserving, protecting, and restoring California’s Wine Country.

For more information, please contact Mary Ann King at (510) 649-9987.

For more information about Water and Wine, download: Water and Wine: Partners in Wine Country Stewardship [2] (pdf, 1.46 MB) Water and Wine - Joint Press Release [3] (pdf, 23 KB)

Water and Wine in the Media:

TU In the News Archive - California [4]

Water and Wine - Media Excerpts [5] (pdf, 56 KB)

Michel-Schlumberger Wine Estate’s Benchland Blog: “Water, Water, Everywhere and all the Fish Did Spawn” [6]

Water and Wine is supported by: