Smoke Taint & How Some Winemakers Win The Battle

[Don Giovanni]

Smoke Taint & How Some Winemakers Win The Battle

First, the press will have the public think the worst has happened to all the wineries…NOT TRUE…look…

A number of sources are reporting that the smoke from this summer’s wildfires in California may have tainted the 2008 winegrape crop. Megafires from Santa Barbara to the Oregon border poured smoke into the prime Cal winegrape growing regions for three solid months, with probable deleterious effect to this year’s wine vintage.

see link Click On Me

I am always on the lookout for some great thinking…with this past year 2008 and over 2,000 wild fires smoke is an issue, especially post- verasion grapes when the grapes become like magnets to all the outside influences, they suck them all in…yep they do …what are they sucking in…?… AWRI (Australian Wine Research Institute) says that “the taint is an aroma or flavor that a sommelier might describe as gamey or spicy”…

Vines absorbed these severed compounds, storing them until the plants transported the carbohydrates and volatile compounds to the ripening fruit, or the grapes absorbed the compounds directly.

So how many time did people say the grapes breath in the terroir that being everything the grapes and vines come into contact with, even the hand of the vineyard manager and winemaker…thus true ‘sense of place’ changes each year just a bit from the basic foundation…don’t think that just because you had smoke taint one year the next year you won’t have a problem, you will as attested by experts in the article…this is that ‘sense of place’ like it or not for those years…

Australian scientists know due to experience how long the problem lasts…

scientists attribute the smoky aroma in part to guaiacol (Gu) and 4- methylguaiacol (4Mgu) ,compounds also identified in wine that are aged in toasted oak barrels. Both compounds take shape when heat decomposes lignin, an organic polymer present in vascular plants.

Rick Davis and Todd Quigley figured out how to treat the Chard must when the compounds are not as bound as they are when the juice is fermented into wine…they used PVPP (polyvinylpolypyrrolidone) and isinglass, pressed the juice into a settle tank, clarified it with the fining agents, then they added yeast hulls to replace suspended solids that polymers and proteins had separated from solution.

For the reds PN , etc.they did the above but also used oak neutral chips in the red wine to bind with the smoke taint compounds… also fermented at a lower temp…

The other way I won’t get into too much is to use a RO machine and run the wine through intense charcoal filters until you strip the wine of the taint…IMHO I believe you strip the guts and glory of the vintage out leaving you with a hollow vintage…

So we see you can’t paint a dismal view on the vintage with smoke taint…I say know your producer and winemaker, as they are the key to a successful vintage …the lesson is don’t paint a broad picture of an area and draw conclusions that the whole vintage is tainted because it’s not…

What this actually does is back up my definition of that sense of place that I posted several times …I have been notified that my definition is being used to teach in Europe …I was also notified that an Oenologist in Italy had come to the same conclusion as I did as to the definition of ‘that sense of place’…

Cheers !!!

Edited February 4, 2009 by Don Giovanni (log)

[ztutz]

A few of those growers may have serendipitous results. Owen Roe "Ex Umbris" was a Syrah made from grapes with smoke taint. I wouldn't want to drink it every evening, but it did make a fantastic pairing with strong smoked meats. My bottles are long gone. It received some high scores from mainstream critics, if I'm not mistaken.

For the rest of the affected growers, I am sorry; winegrape farming is not a big profit business, and something like this can definitely be a disaster.