Smoke taint... EDIT: Never mind, Im just overly panicky..

EDIT: Its blowing off. Just some sort of reduction I guess. I’d been waiting for weeks to see if this wine was effected by the smoke it got for a few days and was overly sensitive to anything I detected.

I just talked to a few growers and it sounds like El Dorado county was much harder hit than Amador due to the wind patterns.

That is a serious bummer. In all likelihood, not your imagination.

How big is the batch?

Is it fermented dry at this point?

Ive probably stuck my nose in the glass 50 times over the last two hours. Sometimes I can smell it and sometimes I cant. It might even be blowing off (which if true probably means it isn’t taint). If I wasn’t looking for it Im not sure Id smell it. If its there is super subtle.

Just a barrel or so. I’m doing very small lots.

Yes

There may be some useful information here http://www.awri.com.au/information_services/current-topics/smoke-taint/

Thanks.

Berry

ETS can do a smoke taint test for you.

The smoke binds to the sugar so you can’t smell or taste is until its fermented. Lighter smoke taint shows much later in the process. Until is done with malo and not active for a few weeks its hard to pick up on the lesser examples of it. You may be able to detect it in the stems by tasting them. Taste the lees, if its there rack off lees. When you sample out of the barrel use a long thief don’t just sample from the top, cover the top of the thief until its submerged several inches to a foot into the wine.

ETS and Vinquiry both have tests for smoke though numbers are not the same from both for some reason, at least in '08. Get a sample tested prior to any contact with new or newish wood as the char from the barrel will add to those compounds as well.

In '08 is was thick for about 5 days in Boonville. When I say thick I mean you could not see the sun, just a orange glowing sky right during the beginning of version. Timing of the smoke in the growing season matters as much as how much smoke and for how long.

my $0.02

Thanks Joe and Paul.

Embarrassingly, in retrospect I think I was smelling diacetyl from the in process MLF. For all my other wines Im going to let MLF happen on its own, but since this one had to potential to have taint I wanted it to get through MLF as fast as possible so I started MLF with inoculation at 5 brix. When I pressed the wines I immediately looked for smoke and when I smelled something unexpected my brain immediately filled in the gaps with “smoke!”. But then it dawned on me it was likely diacetyl. Ive smelled this with inoculated MLF in the past when I made wine just for fun.