Additional Information About the Vinewise® Project
The Washington Wine Industry Foundation helps our industry thrive by bringing together partners and facilitating funding to craft sustainable solutions to meet our industry’s greatest needs. In 2008 the foundation received a grant from the WSDA Specialty Crop Block program to create Vinewise®.
Vinewise® is an online guide to sustainable viticulture practices. It features 13 ‘chapters’ on topics such as Business Plans, Water Management, Canopy Management, Human Resources, and Marketing, and includes a self-assessment, tools and resources for improving sustainability, and an industry comparison report.
Once Vinewise® was created, the Washington Winegrowers Association adopted management of the platform, and over time both the Foundation and the Association have made investments in keeping it updated. However, in 2016 in response to industry feedback, it was determined that the Vinewise® content and platform needed to be updated.
In 2017, the Foundation received a grant from ALTIRA to migrate Vinewise® to a new platform. In that year, the Foundation was also awarded a $250,000 WSDA Specialty Crop Block grant to update the Vinewise® content. The Foundation contracted SureHarvest to facilitate the update.
SureHarvest first conducted a gap analysis to identify practices currently missing in Vinewise®. They then reviewed the current Vinewise® content to identify practices that needed to be updated. The new and updated content is now ready for industry review and input.
Once the content is finalized, the new/updated content will be added, and the foundation expects to re-launch the new Vinewise® in February of 2019.
