Wildfires pose a burning problem for wines and winemakers

Abstract

On a pleasant evening in October 2017, winemaker Alisa Jacobson and her friends picked the last of the Cabernet grapes at her friends’ winery in southern Napa. They were taking advantage of the cool evening temperatures, which help reduce damage to the fruit. Later that night, the pleasant evening air turned acrid—Jacobson was surprised to smell smoke wafting through her bedroom window despite only seeing wildfires on her radar to the far north, in Santa Rosa, CA. Smoke from wildfires can make the skies an eerie yellow, as seen here over a Napa Valley, CA, vineyard in September 2020. The smoke’s effects on winery grapes continue to perplex growers, winemakers, and researchers. Image credit: Science Source/Peter Menzel. A new fire had flared up—the largest in California’s history. Dubbed the Tubbs fire, it spread from Napa County to Santa Rosa, jumped across US Highway 101 in the middle of the night, and burned nearly 37,000 acres before it could be contained, killing 22 people and destroying more than 5,000 buildings, half of them homes. Winemakers like Jacobson, who is vice president for winemaking at Joel Gott Wines, felt the fire’s impact not only in the looming threat to their homes but to their livelihoods as well. Months after evacuation orders were lifted, the region inched back to normalcy. Then winemakers began to detect smoke in their wine. Grapes exposed to smoke absorb chemicals that can alter—and sometimes ruin—the taste and smell of resultant wines. This so-called “smoke taint” has become a growing concern for the industry. Chemicals in smoke obscure wine’s flavor and fragrance, Jacobson says. “You can smell the taint on the aroma, like a campfire, and when you taste it it’s like an ashtray,” she says. “It lingers for minutes after you spit or swallow.” But not all wines …