(UTSanDiego) - The past five years have left Baja’s Valle de Guadalupe high and dry.

High, in that it’s become one of the hottest wine regions in the world, with jet-setting tourists and food and travel writers fueling an explosive growth in upscale wineries, trendy restaurants and boutique hotels.

Dry, in that the semiarid Valle has fallen well below its already paltry 8 to 10 inches annual average rainfall since 2010. Last year saw less than 3 inches of rain; even the desert that is Las Vegas gets an average of 4.2 inches a year.

La falta de agua, or drought, has juiced the Valle de Guadalupe’s wine industry into survival mode, with owners and growers trying everything they can — from old-fashioned farming techniques to innovative technology to buying up land outside the Valle — to keep the grapes growing and the wine flowing.

Like its neighbor California, the Valle is at a crossroads, with the choices made now sure to determine the region’s economic vitality and cultural identity in the coming decades.

In interviews last week, winery owners, winemakers and growers said the scarcity of water in the Valle has always necessitated its efficient use. But the severity of the ongoing drought has left them with many more questions than answers in how to deal with it. Should dams be built to keep winter rainfall from flowing to the Pacific? How much can yields be shrunk before the bottom line shrivels? Do people have the stomach to pull the moneymaking “King of Grapes,” cabernet sauvignon, from the parched ground and replace it with less thirsty, and less prestigious, ones? And perhaps most fundamentally, should people even be making wine there?

“Vines are not endemic to this area and they ask for more water than the Valle de Guadalupe can give,” said Fernando Pérez Castro, the 38-year-old owner of two wineries, Hacienda La Lomita and Finca La Carrodilla.