Wildfire Wine 2: How to save grapes from smoke
Ashy wine doesn’t sell. Can winemakers outsmart smoke damage? Find out what’s being done in labs and vinyards.
Smoke from wildfires can make wine taste really bad. So winemakers are desperate to find solutions. Or is it already too late when a smoke cloud approaches? Let’s find out.
New here? Every month, Climate Culinarians picks one topic and publishes a series of newsletters about it, ending with a recipe (see the weekly structure here). This month will be all about wine and smoke. Subscribe to never miss a new post!
Smoke taint is a sweeping issue. Winemakers and scientists are looking into possible solutions before smoke even got to the vinyard, right after it did, and within the process from grape to wine. If you are wondering how smoke even gets into a grape, let alone into a wine bottle, read Wildfire Wine 1: Why some wines taste like ash.
A smoke alarm for wineries
So you can’t just pick a grape and taste if it’s smoky or not. Once I learned that, it made so much sense to me that the wine industry is keen on test kits.
“You can take grapes and send them off to a lab to test specifically for smoke compounds”, Elizabeth Tomasino confirms. The enologist at Oregon State University also tells me these tests cost about $400 to $500 per sample. Plus, they take several days. “It’s not an easy analysis to get done”, Tomasino explains. Nevertheless, scientists are putting a lot of work into creating “fast and quick field tests” for grapes that were exposed to wildfire smoke.
Because at the vinyard, the clock is ticking.
At the peak of ripeness, a grape balances sugar, acidity, and tannins. Nature drives it from “not there yet” to “too late” within days, sometimes hours. That’s why grape growers and winemakers alike consider harvest timing the most important decision of the year.
As a member of the West Coast Smoke Exposure Task Force, Tomasino gets to learn first-hand what the different fields within the wine industry grapple with, and what kind of solutions they are looking for. They all seem to agree on one thing: Because the wildfire season is getting longer and longer, it would be really good to know about a smoke taint sooner rather than later.
“Much of the work is focusing on the question: What can we measure in the air to know if we should pick our grapes or not?”, says Tomasino. There is no answer yet.
How do you research solutions for smoke taint in wine?
Even though smoke-tainted California wine made the headlines, research about smoke and wine did not start there. “The Australians pioneered a lot of the work in smoke because they started to have these wildfires and see these impacts in wine around 2010”, says Tomasino. “That’s ten years before we started to see problems.”
The U.S. West Coast still enjoys years when wildfires don’t create as much smoke as in 2020. So sometimes scientists like Tomasino have to generate their own smoke. For research experiments, they use gear “just like the popular meat smokers”. But instead of hosting a barbecue on campus, the scientists pipe smoke onto vines they’ve been growing in special cages.
Can you correct a smoky taste through winemaking?
After harvest, winemakers create different styles of wine, depending on the grapes, growing conditions, demand, and so on. You could say it’s their job to manipulate taste. Could winemakers use these skills to get rid of the smoke aroma? To a degree, they can.
For instance, in the last newsletter we learned that both red wine in general and the variety Pinot Noir in particular are more prone to an ashy taste than others. According to Wine Enthusiast, some winemakers are making white wine from Pinot Noir now - and it sells.
Winemakers routinely use filters or add substances that remove unwanted parts of the wine (which is called “fining” in winemaker lingo). Now, many scientists are looking into solutions to remove smoke aroma this way. But Tomasino reminds me of a quality that promises cachet on a wine menu: complexity.
“There are a lot of other things in wine that make it smell and taste nice.”
If you found a substance that removes the smoke compound, it’s very likely something else would drop away, too.
Plus, the chemical to do this trick would have to be safe for consumption. “Because remember, people have to drink this”, says Tomasino.
Same goes for an idea that’s being discussed a lot these days: Can scientists create a spray or a coating to stop the smoke from being absorbed into the grapes? Some research looks promising. But it would take years until it could be used commercially.
How the wine industry braces for more frequent wildfires
And, not to forget: The worst thing that can happen is if a wildfire reaches a vineyard and it burns the vines. “That takes years to recover”, says Tomasino.
Winery associations like the Wine Institute in California publish wildfire guides and checklists, educate members in firescaping and host wildfire preparedness classes. They also point to disaster relief resources for vinyard owners. Because they know it’s only a matter of time until their grapes are threatened by a thick cloud of smoke. Or worse.
There is good news. Just not for alcohol.
The good news is: Wildfire smoke affects goods that have been fermented for alcohol, and that’s it. This may become a problem for hops - the basis for beer - too. But smoke will not make raspberries taste like ashtrays. These fruits are not fermented before we eat them, after all.
I ask Elizabeth Tomasino what winemakers are asking the most for, in terms of research requests. Pests and diseases are a frequent issue, as are droughts, she tells me. And:
The wine industry wants to make wine with little to no alcohol.
Apparently, that’s a big trend.
“They say we want it to taste like wine but to contain no alcohol”, says Tomasino. “And we say that is more complicated than you think.”
Ethanol, it turns out, has quite a big role in determining how wine smells and tastes. But of course, scientists are working on an answer, nevertheless.
What can we all do?
Usually at this point in the newsletter, I post a whole list of action you can take. This time, my interview partner inspired me to do something else: Listen to good advice.
At the end of our interview, Tomasino and I talk about restrictions the administration has put on terms like “climate change”. The scientist reminds me that there is often more than one good point to make. Economic impact, for instance. Sure, wildfire smoke researchers deal with a problem that has a deep connection to climate change. But they also help keep the wine industry strong. And they talk about how important that is.
Just when we are about to wrap up, almost in passing, Elizabeth Tomasino says something I want to carve in stone (if only I knew how to do that).
“You worry about the things that are in your control”, she says, “and you make plans for everything else.”
Talking about plans: Next week, there will be reading recommendations. Books you might enjoy with a nice, smoky … cup of Lapsang Souchong tea. Or what were you thinking of right now?
Read, eat drink, repeat!
Petrina
Climate Culinarians is a project by me, Petrina Engelke. I write about climate and food, and I help other writers turn their ideas into a book people want to read. In other words: I’m a journalist and a book coach. Read more about this newsletter & me here.