Water and wine – an overview

I was discussing the issues involved in water use by wine producers by email with David Graves of Saintsbury winery in California recently and he was kind enough to send this overview:

Water is a necessity for the vine, as everyone knows, but water is also a necessity for transforming grapes into bottled wine. The standard estimates for winery water use run from 2 litres of water per litre of wine all the way up to 10 litres of water per litre of wine. (One way to reduce winery impacts is to practice water conservation and keep the use of...