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p r a c t i c a l w i n e r y & v i n e ya r d n O v e M B e r 2 0 1 4 103 is change all of our hoses to reduce the amount of water used. The biggest usage for water is washing down a winery and tanks. By reducing the hose diameter, you still can get enough pressure, but you can save about 25% of the water on wash downs. ■ One thing that we have asked all our growers to do, and we have helped them with, is the infrared NDBI photographs/ images. You do it right now with the foli- age out there, because it shows you the different colors. Blue being very vigorous, red being not as vigorous. You can go through and map, and literally pin-point and go through with a four wheeler and place the emitters accordingly. We have asked all of our growers to go through and get this done so that we can look at the vineyards and really look at the different areas with the soils, because you will find that the soil structure is so different in different vineyards. ■ With the technology that we have, more water will be found. It might be more costly to find the water, but it will be found and eventually I hope that it satisfies the needs of the wineries. ■ We are trying to encourage our state officials to take action steps, be a little bit more innovative. That is not something that they are tremendously good at yet, but they need to think long and hard about how to increase storage. You have probably heard stories too about heightening dams, things like that. I mean those are all great things to do, but where is the breakthrough innovation there? They really need to focus on groundwater recharge. ■ The key one is research that is going on at UC Davis; that is going to be big. They are all automated, so you can run them off the computer. The main thing is that they can clean-in-place so they (claim to) use 90% less water than a traditional tank just to wash it. We will be able to see, and have seen, how the technology works in the first year, then it will be inspiration to use at our winery, and I am sure others will follow that lead to do more clean-in-place and recycle using re-treated water for different processes like tank or barrel washing, which are two of the big water users in our operation. ■ I am not really worried about the avail- ability of water on a huge level. I was around here in the 1976–1977 drought, and have seen bad ones before, we got through it. I am not overly concerned about nature's abundance of water. I am concerned about the regulatory and en- vironmental pressure to over-react to a frost-year situation. Q: What are the challenges ahead for California wines in competing with in- ternational wines in the domestic wine market, in grocery stores, retail shops and restaurants? ■ All of these wine regions are not going to let up. They want to get into our California market, they want what we have in terms of Napa Valley and offering some of the highest-priced wines. The challenge is to make sure that the local trade organizations really go out and promote their regions as hard as they can and not let up. We could do it on our own, but you get a bigger message, bigger bang for your buck, with the trade organizations like Napa Valley Vintners going out and having retailers, restaurateurs, somme- liers, come to the wineries or wine region. ■ The Europeans are working harder to do more business in America because their wine business is sluggish. People drink less wine over there. They are look- ing for new markets. w i n e b u s i n e s s