As water becomes more scarce, the wine industry will come under more and more pressure to stop irrigating and move towards completely sustainable water management and usage. Linda Johnson-Bell is a wine author and critic who sees the writing on the wall for producers who tap water supplies to irrigate what is essentially a luxury product.
A good example of this is the court case in California where a vineyard company owned by the Harvard Endowment Fund is being sued by agricultural neighbours for buying up rights to use ground water ponds to irrigate their vines. One of the plaintiffs in the case is actually a wine producer using Dry Farming techniques.