Smoke Taint

Untoasted oak chips in the ferment in hopes that they’ll etract some of the smoke taint volatile phenols.

We learned that our Syrah has smoke taint. I can’t lie. I definitely cried and yelled “fuck!!!” a bunch of times. The Syrah was what I wanted to make the most, and it has gone wrong at every turn. It’s hard not to take it personally. It’s only typing it out that brings me back down to earth from my emotional state. It’s embarrassing to type out that I feel like the universe doesn’t want me to connect with Syrah, with my family’s vineyard, with my dad’s legacy. If I’ve learned anything in the year since my dad died, it’s that grief is anything but rational. I wanted so much to make Syrah, to make it myself, to make it well, to make something my dad would be proud of. And that is not going to happen. Not this year, at least. 

What the fuck is smoke taint, you may ask. When grapes are exposed to smoke, usually during nearby wildfires, they can absorb volatile phenols from the smoke. Those volatile phenols then bind to sugars in the grapes forming non-volatile phenolic glycosides. The volatile phenols and their glycosides can basically taste like an ash tray. We’re not talking pleasant smokiness imparted from oak aging or anything like that. We’re talking about that time in 1980 when you grabbed a handful of cigarette butts out of your auntie’s ash tray and shoved

them in your mouth. Just toddler-me? The worst part is that the glycosides can break apart at any time and release the volatile phenols to wreak havoc, so a wine that tastes fine when you bottle it might taste like an ash tray down the road at some point. Not exactly what you want your name on out there. 

There are some people in Oregon who have dealt with smoke tainted grapes in recent years. We were lucky enough to get advice from a winemaker in Southern Oregon who has dealt with this before. There are even more winemakers in California that have dealt with smoke taint, but it’s the Australians who have been dealing with this for years now, and they have a protocol down. 

Here’s a page the Australian Wine Research Institute has put together about dealing with smoke taint, if you’re interested. https://www.awri.com.au/industry_support/winemaking_resources/smoke-taint/

One of the first things we did was dump a bunch of untoasted oak chips into the ferment. Just as toasted oak can impart compounds into the wine, untoasted oak can absorb compounds from wine into the wood, including smoke taint molecules. Imparting fruitiness and sweetness is important to counterbalance the smoke flavors, so using a yeast strain meant to produce fruity esters and pressing before fully dry are good options. Pressing lightly to avoid unnecessary phenolic extraction is a good idea too. We did all these things and more.

We even did carbon trials and added a small amount of activated carbon to the wine to extract some of the volatile phenols. The downside of treating the wine with activated carbon is that it takes away some of the positive attributes of the wine—flavors, body, and color. 

It’s all a bummer, but by the time we got to the carbon trials, I had already grieved the wine and was happy for the science experiment.