by Stewart Johnson » February 19th, 2021, 8:34 pm
I've got one strong recommendation and one more tentative one. The strong one is to establish your own baseline numbers from non-smoke years by putting together a composite of several vintages representing your vineyard, your barrel program, fermentation regimen, etc. and sending it to ETS. That's a way better reference point than the guidelines ETS has developed for bucket ferments. The more tentative recommendation is Enartis Fenol Free as a fining agent.
Here's my smoke story, to date. 2020 was the first time I'd had smoke at vine-level in the vineyard. I had elevated guaiacol numbers on berry samples, though those results didn't come back until the wine was in barrel. Several times, I got strong whiffs of apple cider spice during crush, which I figured was guaiacol/eugenol. Still, I pressed my luck with one lot, that was comprised of my very best grapes, and kept the juice on the stems and skins for 4 weeks -- too long. I had hedged my bets with 3 other lots and gone with less whole cluster and earlier pressing. So, I fought the conventional wisdom and the conventional wisdom won when the extended maceration lot turned out to show some smoky character. I'll say that I don't think I'm very sensitive to smoke myself. I thought this lot was possibly smoky, but the ETS numbers were more definite. So, I fined that lot with Fenol Free and hit all the lots with chitosan (which is my normal post-ML practice anyway). Fenol Free is carbon that Enartis touts as effective against smoke taint. I'd trialed other carbon products on whites and found them really deleterious, but the trials with Fenol Free showed it to be pretty benign and effective on the pinot. This smoky lot was only 8 barrels, and I blended it with 15 other barrels to form a single lot for the bulk market. I thought it tasted ok and ran it by another winemaker, just to be sure. Once you decide you have an insensitivity to something, you imagine that thing is lurking everywhere, undetected. Anyway, we agreed it was fine, and I sent it off to ETS for confirmation. When the results came back with 6 micrograms/L of guaiacol, which is pretty significant on the ETS bucket ferment guideline, I was pretty bummed. I figured I'd be calling VA Filtration for that lot. Those guidelines don't account for any oak contact, so it wasn't a great reference point for a lot that had been in oak (25% new). I figured stems might also be a confounding factor. I submitted a sample of a mix of three preceding vintages, which had no smoke contact, and just got back result of 8.4 micrograms/L -- a baseline significantly higher than the bulk blend that I had thought was in jeopardy. Needless to say, I'm relieved.
I've got one strong recommendation and one more tentative one. The strong one is to establish your own baseline numbers from non-smoke years by putting together a composite of several vintages representing your vineyard, your barrel program, fermentation regimen, etc. and sending it to ETS. That's a way better reference point than the guidelines ETS has developed for bucket ferments. The more tentative recommendation is Enartis Fenol Free as a fining agent.
Here's my smoke story, to date. 2020 was the first time I'd had smoke at vine-level in the vineyard. I had elevated guaiacol numbers on berry samples, though those results didn't come back until the wine was in barrel. Several times, I got strong whiffs of apple cider spice during crush, which I figured was guaiacol/eugenol. Still, I pressed my luck with one lot, that was comprised of my very best grapes, and kept the juice on the stems and skins for 4 weeks -- too long. I had hedged my bets with 3 other lots and gone with less whole cluster and earlier pressing. So, I fought the conventional wisdom and the conventional wisdom won when the extended maceration lot turned out to show some smoky character. I'll say that I don't think I'm very sensitive to smoke myself. I thought this lot was possibly smoky, but the ETS numbers were more definite. So, I fined that lot with Fenol Free and hit all the lots with chitosan (which is my normal post-ML practice anyway). Fenol Free is carbon that Enartis touts as effective against smoke taint. I'd trialed other carbon products on whites and found them really deleterious, but the trials with Fenol Free showed it to be pretty benign and effective on the pinot. This smoky lot was only 8 barrels, and I blended it with 15 other barrels to form a single lot for the bulk market. I thought it tasted ok and ran it by another winemaker, just to be sure. Once you decide you have an insensitivity to something, you imagine that thing is lurking everywhere, undetected. Anyway, we agreed it was fine, and I sent it off to ETS for confirmation. When the results came back with 6 micrograms/L of guaiacol, which is pretty significant on the ETS bucket ferment guideline, I was pretty bummed. I figured I'd be calling VA Filtration for that lot. Those guidelines don't account for any oak contact, so it wasn't a great reference point for a lot that had been in oak (25% new). I figured stems might also be a confounding factor. I submitted a sample of a mix of three preceding vintages, which had no smoke contact, and just got back result of 8.4 micrograms/L -- a baseline significantly higher than the bulk blend that I had thought was in jeopardy. Needless to say, I'm relieved.