(WFP) - On April 1, Mendocino County wine grape grower Zac Robinson was feeling more upbeat about the prospects for his 2014 crop than he was two months earlier. Since then, the rain has returned to his Anderson Valley vineyards. That includes a total of about 3 inches that fell just in the last six days of March.

“In terms of water supply, we started the year in a dire place and things have gotten better,” he says. “We’re probably out of the range of unprecedented drought and into a severe drought.”

Robinson and Amanda Robinson Holstine, representing the third generation of their family to grow wine grapes, are co-owners of Husch Vineyards. Planted in the late 1960s on ground formerly used to grow apples and grapes, the vineyard’s 30 acres of Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Gewurtztraminer include some of the earliest varietal plantings on the valley floor.