So, sitting by the stove, watching out the window as Northern California is washed away I’m thinking of the number of fires in the wine growing areas out here that have occurred in this past, prolonged drought. Even before that, in my neck of the woods (Anderson Valley), we had a conflagration in 2008 that was horrendous. For weeks, smoke clung to the hillsides as locals, mostly on their own, battled the fires up and down the mountainsides, and many lost their homes.
We harvested our grapes, (pinot noir and syrah), and Wells at Copain tried numerous measures to clear the juice of the intense smokiness. He elected not to single vineyard designate our juice, and rightfully so, but blended with (I think) other Anderson Valley sites for his appellation designates. I remember how discouraged he seemed, contacting other winemakers; even calling Australia which apparently has this smoke tinged problem more often.
Well, I just had a Copain Les Voisins 2008 Pinot Noir, with Italian porchetta, garlic roasted red potatoes, and steamed spinach, and it was wonderful. Not a hint of smoke that I remembered from other bottling 3-4 years ago. Still holding on to fruit, tannins almost nonexistent, acids melding well to accompany the pork. Not as complex as some single vineyard offering, but thoroughly enjoyable.
I quite surprised how this wine has evened out, and the heavily smoked taste has dissipated. Have others found that time alone has rid wines of smokiness? I truthfully have not tasted other ‘smoke damaged’ wines early on, then again after a few years, and would appreciate other peoples’ take on this.
Link to Anderson Valley fires 2008 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/07/us/07firefighters.html
Interesting. After exoeriencibg a few smoke tainted wines early on I avoided Mendocino County 2008 altogether. I had a Williams Selyem Ferrington from 2008. Didn’t write a note so likely it wasn’t tainted.
BTW, huge fan of Baker Ranch here!
Greetings, neighbor. In my experience, it is and has been a bottle to bottle, site to site moving target. The sites up valley and earlier picked, such as Ferrington for instance, seem to have fared better than the Deep End. The wines that were treated for 4EP/EG via RO seem to have a diminished smoke character, but diminished body, breadth, and length as well. Frankly a few of the untreated wines, smoke and all, were more drinkable, to my palate, due to the retention of at least some Pinot character. Joe did a great job in '08 with Foursight, as well as Toby at Phillips Hill. Those wines worked pretty well with barbecue…
I still have some of my old Breggo in the cellar, I’ll open one here and there, there seems to be no rhyme or reason to how they show at any point in time. I’ll open one and it will be undrinkably charcoal/campfire/cigar ash, and the next, same bottling, will show the concentrated fruit that the low yields of the vintage would have highlighted had the smoke not been an issue. Our Ferrington Pinot seems to be a 50/50 proposition, when you get a good bottle, it actually rocks!
We made a Zicherman Roemer Syrah that year, before they ripped out the vines, where the fruit was so plush and jammy the smoke gave a meaty, charcoal edge to the wine that I actually think improved it, from a complexity stand point. That wine is at its drinking peak right now, but undeniably smoky. The Alder Springs Syrah we made that year was all smoke and no fruit; wasn’t good then, isn’t good now. Laytonville got torched though.
We have so many data points from that year, with so many different wines made and so many different techniques utilized, that I hate to say it but I don’t think any hard conclusions or solutions can be taken; I’m not sure it’s clear which is the best path to take when the problem inevitably occurs again. To answer your original question, I don’t think there are any answers to be given. There are no good wines from '08, only good bottles, is probably the best I can do. Cheers!
I had some smoke tainted Papapietro Perry and La Crema wines some years ago (the latter being freebies) didn’t much care for them that much, but wouldn’t just pour them down the sink at least.
Second on the Baker Ranch. We had a Copain Baker Ranch recently that was dynamite. No notes or pictures but I think it was an '11, kinda young but we wanted to share with a family member who loves Syrah.
So, I guess there is no consensus on if, or how, smoked wine might improve with time. I sure don’t see how it can vary that much bottle to bottle, when presumably it was tanked and ‘kegged’ homogenously. In any case, I’ll enjoy the few I have left from '08, and hope the next smoke attack is far in the future.
Appreciate the accolades for Baker Ranch swill; but I have little to be responsible for except planting the field, farming organically, and hoping Mother Nature is smiling on us. Wells at Copain, and the guys at Anthill (PN) are the main players in what happens when the cork comes out, but they do like the terroir. Also might mention to Dar R (who must have some connection to Navarro), that Jim Klein took the first 3-4 harvests from BR in the early 2000’s, and he was the first to purport the uniqueness of the site, especially for the Syrah. sb
My opinion after a few smokey vintages up here is that smoke taint is a very elusive animal. It’s impossible to explain but the smoke definitely “comes and goes”. I share this opinion with many of my grape growing friends up here on the Klamath who have watched many of these wines age over a 5-10 yr period.
I’m still a little skeptical of how grapes can be “smoked” to the extent you would notice it in a bottle of wine, but hey, I’ve never tried any of them so cannot comment on them. But I find the ipso facto explanation a little simplistic.
I tasted three obviously smoke-tainted wines at a couple of public tasting events in the past year. Two of the wines were from Mendocino County, one from Sonoma Coast, all from 2008. I may be more sensitive to smoke taint than some people but it was obvious right off the bat for me. I wondered why producers were pouring these wines at a public tasting at all, but I suppose others may not notice or recognize the smoke taint, or even like it.
Smoke taint in wines is very real, Markus. And like TCA in wines, once you experience smoke-tainted wines, you will never forget that character.
Ken
I was running Londer(5 vineyards all thru the valley) and Foursight(all estate in Boonville) in 2008 and the themes I found were, the earlier you picked and the less extractive you wine making the less smoke you got in the wines. However the roses made that year were among the most noticeable where as my whites(and Breggo as I recall) got some of the best scores and accolades ever on that vintage due to low yields and no skin contact. Navarro did some skin contact on a few of the whites, just as Londer normally did but not in '08, and got some smoke in those wines.
I still have a case of mixed '08’s from the valley that year and some library of mine. I don’t open them often enough to call it bottle variation but definitly they have changed over time. Some have got better some have got worse.
The hardest thing was sales and marketing. We did hundreads of food pairings. I settled on a free 1oz container of alaskan smoked sea salt with purchase for Londer. At Foursight we did cambozola, crab chips(old bay potato chips from UTZ), and a few 32oz jar of Pappys BBQ sauce(enough to marinate up to 4 tri tips) with purchase of a case. At Londer we dropped the price from $30 to $20 and still had to offload some as a couple of our vineyards were not very damaged by frost. At Foursight we dropped the price from $38-$46 to $10 and the BBQ sauce with a case or more and blew thru it in a few months over the summer.
Great BBQ, camping, or other red solo cup events. We also liked it in chili or made into a sauce.
I got so sensitive to the compounds I can’t even drink 100% new oak heat toast barrels any more. 2008 kept me up at night during the drought and gave me nightmares. I still don’t know exactly what I would do given the vintage again. I just keep trying to save money hoping I will be able to afford to skip the vintage, but 2 of the 3 who tried that are no longer with us. I just wanted to survive to make another vintage. Good think '07 and '09 were great years where we made a lot of wine to make up for the losses of the '08.
I had a really interesting food pairing experience with one smoke-tainted wine some years ago. Tasted the wine first and it had very noticeable, though not really bad, smoke taint. Then tasting the wine again right after the food pairing (can’t quite recall, maybe smoked pork belly and something else), the difference in perception was remarkable, and the smoke taint character in the wine was barely noticeable.
Bringing this back seem timely.
I had dinner with a flavor scientist at Sierra Nevada Brewing and asked her about the recent fires and smoke up in Oregon near their hop sources and how they deal with “smokey” years.
Her answer was fascinating: she said that the part of the hops that contributes to beer flavor is not water soluble, so they can ‘build around that’ and not have smokey beer. She said that smoke residue is primarily water soluble, making it more of a problem for wine than beer.