Our Salmon-Safe certification provides a framework for looking at water in exactly that way: as part of a connected system.
What Salmon-Safe Certification Means
Salmon-Safe is a third-party certification focused on protecting water quality and aquatic habitat throughout the Pacific Northwest. For farms and vineyards, the program evaluates practices that can influence how water moves through agricultural land and what that water may carry downstream.
Standards consider areas including irrigation and water use, erosion and sediment control, runoff, pesticide and fertilizer risks, riparian areas, and aquatic habitat. Rather than recognizing a single conservation project, Salmon-Safe looks at how the agricultural property is managed as a whole and requires continuing verification to maintain certification.
For Knudsen Vineyards, that means looking beyond how water benefits the vineyard itself. We also consider where that water comes from, how it moves across the property, and how our farming decisions can affect water leaving the vineyard.
A Water System Built Over Decades
Thoughtful water management has been part of Knudsen Vineyards for decades. The property includes two irrigation ponds that help store water for use when additional irrigation is needed during the growing season. The lower irrigation pond also captures surface runoff from the property. Instead of simply allowing that water to continue downhill, part of the rainfall already reaching the vineyard can become part of our onsite water-management system.
Knudsen Vineyards also has six wells connected to replenishing underground aquifers, contributing another source of water available on the property. Together, these resources allow us to manage irrigation with an understanding of both the needs of the vines and the water systems surrounding them.
Applying Water Where It Is Needed
When irrigation is necessary, drip irrigation allows water to be delivered directly to individual vines rather than applied broadly across the vineyard. That makes it possible to use water more deliberately, responding to vineyard conditions rather than treating every part of the property the same way.
Knudsen Vineyards has described the irrigation system developed by Cal Knudsen and former vineyard manager Allen Holstein as being supplied by renewable water sources available on the property. The system reflects an approach that has been part of the vineyard for generations: understand the resources available here and use them carefully.
How Salmon-Safe Farming Protects Water Quality
Water stewardship is about more than supplying vines with enough water. It also means paying attention to what may leave the vineyard when water moves across the land. Soil disturbed by erosion can become sediment downstream, while agricultural materials can also move with runoff if they are not carefully managed.
Salmon-Safe standards encourage practices designed to reduce those risks by addressing erosion, runoff, vineyard inputs, and the areas where agricultural land interacts with the surrounding environment. In the steep terrain and winter rainfall of the Dundee Hills, those considerations are especially important. Protecting soil and managing runoff on the vineyard can help protect water farther downstream.
From Vineyard to Watershed
Salmon-Safe certification gives us a way to look at water as more than a vineyard resource. It asks us to consider the entire path water takes: where it comes from, how we store and use it, how it travels across the property, and what it may carry with it when it leaves.
That broader perspective is an important part of how we care for Knudsen Vineyards. The choices made here in the Dundee Hills are connected to a much larger watershed, and responsible water management helps us care for both the vineyard we farm today and the ecosystems downstream.
