Water into wine: How vintners conserve H20

Local grape growers, especially those with a sustainability focus, haven’t just started paying attention to water use, says Steve Sangiacomo, one of two third-generation brothers (and a sister, Mia Pucci)|

Local grape growers, especially those with a sustainability focus, haven’t just started paying attention to water use, says Steve Sangiacomo, one of two third-generation brothers (and a sister, Mia Pucci) running Sangiacomo Family Vineyards south of Sonoma.

“Sonoma County winegrowers have been leading the charge from an education standpoint,” he said, “doing a lot of education seminars even before the drought, to limit the use of water.”

The recent attention paid to the state’s diminishing water resources has focused attention on the high amount of water used in agriculture. Some claim that up to 80 percent of the state’s water is going to irrigate farmlands of one sort or another, though others point out that doesn’t include the half of the water in environmental use – that portion in lakes, rivers and streams not allocated for human use.

Since here in Sonoma County, most farmland is in wine production, which leads inevitably to questions about the amount of water we need to produce the county’s primary crop –and arguably, one of life’s great pleasures.

But estimates of water use in wine production range from 30 up to 150 gallons of water used to produce every glass of wine. A glass of wine is 6 ounces, a gallon is 128 ounces – so that’s roughly 7,000 times more ounces of water than you get in your pinot. It’s enough to make you turn your “Save Water, Drink Wine” T-shirt into rags.

Mike Sangiacomo points out that water conservation is not an add-on to traditional vineyard management practices, but “part of the viticulture process. How you’re going to prune it, how you’re going to manage the canopy, how you’re going to irrigate it.”

The 1,200 acres the family owns – most of it in the Sonoma Valley and Sonoma Carneros AVAs, though they also have vineyards near Petaluma and Penngrove – produce fruit for about 70 area wineries, including BR Cohn, Landmark, Ledson, Ram’s Gate and many more. They like the term “custom grape-growers” to describe their relationship with winemakers.

For all winegrowers, irrigation is a primary concern, but not just because of responsible water use. For years winemakers have known that the quality of the end product depends not only on how much water the fruit gets, but also on how little. A lack of water can increase the concentration of flavors in the fruit – while an abundance of water can make its flavors bland, even if production rises. “You want to make sure you’re giving the plant the right amount of water so it can focus on the development of flavors,” said Steve Sangiacomo.

Since grandfather Vittorio Sangiacomo started the vineyard in 1927, the technology of water management has changed considerably. There’s always been rainfall to serve as the primary water supply, and historic appropriated water rights from nearby streams – drawn in the winter months and used to fill reservoirs for use later in the year.

Now, however, a farmer’s instinct for how much water a vineyard needs is supplemented by new tools that accurately measure how much moisture is in the plant or the soil, and advise how much irrigation is needed for optimal growth.

One of these tools is a “neutron probe,” a simple device (you can pick one up at Home Depot for as little as 20 bucks) that measures water content in soil. But that doesn’t help a farmer know how much water is in the vine itself, or the fruit.

Of more use is the “pressure bomb,” in which a single leaf is sealed into a chamber and submitted to compressed air; the resulting water vapor that’s released is measured to determine the water potential of the shoot, in much the same way a cuff measures blood pressure.

This trailer-mounted unit can cost about $1,500 and up, but produce extremely accurate measurements.

Another new instrument has come on the market in the past few years from a Bay Area startup called Tule Technologies. They market a sensor that’s mounted in the middle of a vineyard field of from one to 10 acres, to measure the total amount of water that evaporates by wind eddies, the “evapotranspiration” rate. These are gaining wide use in area vineyards, including at Sangiacomo.

“One reason we started in grapes is because the grape growers of the north coast are very interested in managing their water right,” said Tom Shapland, one of the co-founders of Tule Technologies. “It has great impact on their fields and their quality, and they’re very interested in doing the right thing with water resources.”

These sensors run about $1,500 per year, on a contract basis, allowing the farmer to be receive dynamically updated information on how much water is in the field and how much it needs for desired productivity.

Nearly all vineyards now use drip irrigation, which distributes water directly to the root system of the vine. The trellis-mounted spray systems have fallen far out of favor, though they may still be used for frost control.

“We design our irrigation sets down to two or two and-a-half acres,” Steve Sangiacomo said – much smaller than the former 10 to 20 acre sets. What this means is that water can be delivered to relatively small plots of vineyard, fulfilling the hydration needs of specific varietals or clones in specific soils. “We can focus in on the areas that truly need the water first.”

The result of more information, more precision, more accuracy is less water usage. “We’re not water wasters, we’re water conservers,” said Steve Sanciacomo, and his brother Michael adds, “This didn’t just start two years ago.”

Still, even depending on all these precision measurements and the winemaker’s preference for concentrated fruit flavors, more often than not the vines are irrigated with more water than just that supplied by rainfall. How much? The conservative figure among today’s vineyard managers like the Sangiacomos is a quarter acre-foot per acre of vineyard. (An acre foot is an acre of land covered by a foot of water.) That’s over 80,000 gallons of water used on an acre of land – and a vineyard acre produces three or four tons of fruit.

It’s unrealistic, however, to expect a given amount of water to produce an equal amount of wine – that’s a feat reserved for magicians and messiahs. Most of the water inevitably goes into the plant’s growth, returning to the water table through the soil.

On the upside, at least right now, there is enough water naturally occurring in Sonoma County to continue growing wine grapes. “Certainly now, everybody’s working as hard as they ever have to conserve water,” said Michael Sangiacomo. “And compared to other places in the state, the north coast is doing better – knock on wood.” The recent inch of rain that fell on Sonoma Valley helped, by delaying the need for irrigation by about a month, probably into June.

For the time being, at least, the vines are healthy, the grapes are growing, the wineries are producing. “We sound our wells every spring and fall, we just got done doing it now,” said Michael. They’re at normal levels. Again, knock on wood, we’re in a good area for groundwater. So far.”’

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