The rains of winter and spring may have filled reservoirs throughout California, but using less water and using it more efficiently remain top priorities for most in the wine industry—especially if a strong La Niña effect ushers in the return of drought conditions across much of the West.

Understanding those concerns, the organizers of this year’s national conference of the American Society for Enology and Viticulture put together a full-day symposium about vineyard water management and a seminar about water use in winemaking as parts of their three-day event.

The conference takes place June 28-30 in Monterey, Calif., and the water symposium is the first day of the event. The symposium features experts from California, Washington state, Canada and Australia delivering presentations about how vines are affected by water stress as well the latest technology to monitor plant water use.

Mike McCarthy with the South Australian Research & Development Institute will deliver two presentations: one on using rootstocks to deal with drought and another about irrigation decisions.

James Harbertson is an associate professor of enology at the Washington State University Wine Science Center and interim program director with the ASEV. He said he and other conference organizers wanted to provide attendees with current, topical material.

Arsenic in wine
Another issue that recently generated national headlines is concern about the amount of arsenic in wine. In March 2015, a Southern California law firm filed a class-action lawsuit alleging the wine produced or sold by 28 companies including The Wine Group, Treasury Wine Estates, Constellation Brands and others contained unacceptably high levels of arsenic.

The lawsuit used lab tests that indicated wines produced or sold by the companies had levels of arsenic higher than what is allowed in drinking water.

The issue garnered more publicity after an electrical engineering professor at the University of Washington conducted a similar study of 65 wines from California, Washington, New York and Oregon and found all but one had levels of arsenic higher than the limit for drinking water.

The class-action lawsuit has since been dismissed, but the studies comparing wine to drinking water may have raised some lingering concerns among consumers about arsenic in wine.

The conference keynote address, “Arsenic in Wine: A Scientific Perspective,” takes place June 29 and will be delivered by Dr. Carl Winter of the University of California, Davis. Winter is a specialist in the cooperative extension of food science and technology and an expert in the detection of pesticides and naturally occurring toxins in food.

“That’s clearly something that’s on a lot of people’s minds in the wine industry right now,” Harbertson said, adding that Winters should provide some scientific context to the issue and “set everyone straight about the risk.”

Harbertson said Winters is an entertaining speaker and someone from outside the world of wine academia who can provide an “outside of the box viewpoint” on the issue. “We tried to get somebody who approaches it from the food toxicology standpoint.”

Winters told Wines & Vines that he plans to discuss “arsenic toxicology, the presence of arsenic in all foods and then specifically the presence of arsenic in wines and its very low contribution to dietary exposure.

“I might also include a little bit on glyphosate in wine, since this has been getting a lot of attention,” Winters said of the active ingredient in the herbicide Roundup. “If I do that, I might wrap up with a (musical) rendition of ‘I Sprayed It on the Grapevine,’ although I need to talk with meeting organizers to get their thoughts on this as well.” (Listen to some of Winter’s greatest hits at foodsafe.ucdavis.edu.)

Sulfur, salinity and sustainability
Other sessions at the conference will include a joint winemaking and grapegrowing seminar about sulfur management from the vineyard to the cellar. Confirmed speakers include Tom Collins from Washington State University and Misha T. Kwasniewski from the University of Missouri.

The conference also features two sessions dedicated to winemaking or grapegrowing, and both concern water.

The grapegrowing seminar will focus on dealing with soil salinity. It’s an issue confronting growers in many regions of California because the drought caused an accumulation of salts in the soil.

The ASEV has also organized a tour of Monterey County vineyards and wineries that will take place June 27.

The national conference will take place at the Portola Hotel & Monterey Marriott in Monterey, Calif. For more details and a complete schedule visit asev.org.