YAKIMA — Could beer lovers and wine aficionados suffer a drought of their own if the Pacific Northwest doesn't see rain soon?

The region is the nation's largest producer of hops, a key ingredient in beer, and Washington state and Oregon are among the top five states producing wine.

But drought in the Pacific Northwest is forcing growers to perform water-management magic on permanent crops that must be nurtured each year.

"Different blocks, different varieties, different locations all use water differently. It's like playing chess on three levels," said Vicky Scharlau, executive director of the Washington Association of Wine Grape Growers.

Wine-grape growers worry less about quantity of water than about timing, Scharlau said. And less water doesn't necessarily mean a worse vintage, but growers will have to be especially aggressive water managers this year.

Washington is the country's second-largest producer of wine, at $2.4 billion a year, with more than 300 wineries and 300 wine-grape growers. California leads the nation; New York and Oregon are third and fourth, respectively.

Drought is the hot topic, but less so for wine than any other crop, said Mike Haddox, general manager of Eastern Washington operations for Washington Wine and Beverage and winemaker for Glen Fiona winery in Walla Walla.

Wine-grape growers use a technique called regulated deficit irrigation to stress the grapes a little bit, anyway.

"Other crops, stress is not a good thing. You don't end up with a good product," Haddox said. "But wine grapes actually go into a survival mode and concentrate on their fruit.

"I may be talking prematurely, but I think a condition like this year, you're going to have a stellar vintage."

Washington produces roughly 75 percent of U.S. hops, which were a $73 million crop for the state in 2003. Oregon and Idaho rank second and third, making the Pacific Northwest the nation's largest hop-producing region.

The industry has seen its share of struggles in recent years. Between 1994 and 2004, hop production in the United States declined almost 26 percent, and imports from Germany and France jumped 320 percent.

Hop growers often don't start watering crops until May, but they need the water supply to be available well into autumn, said Steve George of the Washington Hop Commission.

"The month of September is all about sizing and getting the flavoring, and if you don't have the moisture at the end, you're not going to have what they need," George said.

Tom Carpenter, a farmer in the Yakima Valley, began irrigating his hop fields early in the season in anticipation of having his water shut off in April by the irrigation district.

"We're irrigating hops that we wouldn't normally irrigate this early in hopes that it'll hold the water," Carpenter said.

Conditions were far better in Oregon, because counties that declared a drought emergency are not hop-growing regions, said Andrew Kerr, president of the Oregon Hop Commission.

"Things aren't looking that bad for Oregon, fortunately," Kerr said.