4 Things You Should Know About the California Wine Industry

(Care2) - Wine. Red, white, pink, or sparkling, it’s produced all over the world in vineyards ranging from those maintained by vast corporations to small family farms. It’s been a mainstay of human society for centuries, with grape wines made by the Greeks and Romans and other fruits used in wine production in Ancient China, numerous African societies and the New World.

How much do you know about how wine is made, and what lurks behind the wine industry? In California, as in other wine-producing regions, the industry may be an economic boon, bringing billions of dollars into state coffers, but it comes with a dark side as well — wine has serious environmental impacts that often get short shrift in discussions about wine and all that goes with it. Go into the grocery store and flip open the wine list better prepared next time with some facts about California’s wine industry that may surprise you.

1. California is losing valuable forests and farmlands to vineyards

California’s farmland is under increasing pressure, thanks to the state’s growing population. Development is eating up formerly arable land as housing expands, particularly in wine country, where many people want to invest in real estate thanks to the high values in the region. Since living next to a vineyard or even owning a small winery (managed by skilled personnel) is a status symbol, development in wine country is proceeding apace despite the economy.

As vines become the state’s premiere crop, farmland is giving way to vineyards in costly and time-consuming conversions, making less land available for food production. That’s bad news for California in terms of food security, but it also means that the state is looking at an epidemic of monocropping, with vines as far as the eye can see.