With all the horrific fires in California in the early and mid summer of 2008 numbering in the hundreds, and folks in the wine country living in a haze for weeks at a time, it’s no wonder that many people have asked if the vineyards have been affected and what impact, if any, there would be on the wine. 

Twenty years ago I would have laughed out loud…how could smoke impact wine when the grapes are still on the vine?  But of course, I was also skeptical years ago about the mysterious but pleasant eucalyptus aromatics in Heitz Martha’s Vineyard Cabernet until someone said it was because of the eucalyptus trees on the property.  

Subsequently, I have discovered and confirmed that volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, can find their way into grapes through the skins to become part of the juice component and ultimately, if concentrated enough, can end up in the wine itself, having been dissolved nicely into the alcohol environment during fermentation.

And it’s not just smoke.  The oil from the leaves of eucalyptus trees volatilizes on a hot summer day and can find its way into grape wine if the trees are near the vineyard. 

Many years ago I was retained as a consultant by a West Texas oil company to determine if a vineyard owner who grew grapes next to an oil derrick had his grapes contaminated by VOC’s.  I was able to demonstrate that there was contamination, but only in grapes that were within 50 feet of the de-gassing unit on the oil rig.  I used a smog study done in Los Angeles to support my numbers.

But how does all this impact wines in Northern California?  In 2008, the fires burned for so long and smoke was so thick in the vineyards of Mendocino County especially, that some grapes absorbed the volatile “smokey” compounds and the resultant wines seemed to taste a bit smokey.  Instant barbeque!  Some guys like the smell.  We have one wine that exhibits a bit of grilled meat on the Weber.  It’s a pleasant mesquite-like, toasty, aromatic of lightly seared tri-tip and a bit campfire smokey.  But where do you draw the line between pleasantly distinct or just odd and unusual? 

In 1985 I worked at a large Napa Valley winery where I intentionally burned new barrels with a hot fire and then extinguished the fire quickly with the garden hose so I could have some residual “smoke” characters in the wine aged in that barrel.   The result was wonderful richness and “bacon fat” and light smokey qualities which everyone clambered for.   So maybe the question is:  when is enough, enough?  The bottom line is not to go overboard with one overpowering aroma or flavor.  Complexity and ranges of flavors are components I have always looked for when evaluating classic wines for work and pleasure.

The question ultimately may be did Mother Nature take us to the mat in 2008?  As it turns out, we can now measure “smoke taint” in wine.  The compounds pulled from the affected wine are the same compounds that are pulled from wine aged for a couple of years in my “smoked”, hand-crafted wine barrels.  The organic compounds from the charred wood of the barrels appear exactly as the same characters found in some lots of wine from Mendocino vineyards in 2008.  

In 2008, we could have saved a lot of money spent smoking the barrels to produce the bent staves and flavors we wanted…we could have waited for Mother Nature (if only we knew).  Playing with our barrels for complexity and nuance is part of the fun of winemaking, but I’m not sure I would want to be played around with again by Mother Nature and her wildfires, like we were last year.                                                                                                                                                            Tom Eddy