It's already a bad wildfire season out west.
How does smoke taint wine?
When wood burns it releases volatile phenols that grapes absorb into their skins. A trace of these compounds gives barrel-aged wine its pleasant toasty note, but wildfire smoke can make a wine taste like licking a cold fireplace.
The grapes bind the smoke compounds to sugar molecules where you can't taste or smell them right away. The taint stays hidden until fermentation and aging, then comes back again in your mouth, where your saliva snaps those bonds and releases the smoke all over again.
Timing matters. Smoke before veraison does little damage. Grapes are most vulnerable from about 7 days after veraison, when they start turning red, through harvest.
Red wines get hit harder than whites, because the taint lives in the skins and red winemaking soaks the juice on those skins during fermentation.
In the cellar the fixes are blunt. Reverse osmosis can strip the free smoke compounds out, and activated carbon or heavy fining can knock them down too. All of that pulls out color and aroma along with the taint, and none of it removes the bound smoke still locked in the wine. A "fixed" wine can taste clean at bottling and turn ashy again over the following months.
For a low-intervention winemaker like me, there is no true solution.
My plan for a heavy smoke year is to make a rosé. I'll press the fruit fast and pull the juice off the skins before the taint can settle in.
How does smoke taint wine?
When wood burns it releases volatile phenols that grapes absorb into their skins. A trace of these compounds gives barrel-aged wine its pleasant toasty note, but wildfire smoke can make a wine taste like licking a cold fireplace.
The grapes bind the smoke compounds to sugar molecules where you can't taste or smell them right away. The taint stays hidden until fermentation and aging, then comes back again in your mouth, where your saliva snaps those bonds and releases the smoke all over again.
Timing matters. Smoke before veraison does little damage. Grapes are most vulnerable from about 7 days after veraison, when they start turning red, through harvest.
Red wines get hit harder than whites, because the taint lives in the skins and red winemaking soaks the juice on those skins during fermentation.
In the cellar the fixes are blunt. Reverse osmosis can strip the free smoke compounds out, and activated carbon or heavy fining can knock them down too. All of that pulls out color and aroma along with the taint, and none of it removes the bound smoke still locked in the wine. A "fixed" wine can taste clean at bottling and turn ashy again over the following months.
For a low-intervention winemaker like me, there is no true solution.
My plan for a heavy smoke year is to make a rosé. I'll press the fruit fast and pull the juice off the skins before the taint can settle in.
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