In my experience they get worse. As fruit and oak fades, the smoke stays the same and becomes more noticeable. I’ve not had any 2020 Pinots from Oregon yet so can’t say about them specifically.
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Has anyone tasted any 2020 Cameron? I recall John Paul claiming that his wines in barrel showed no smoke taint whatsoever. Now there are four Portland retailers (that I know of) offering the SVDs and calling them outstanding and perhaps the best ever. This seems quite remarkable considering that everyone else on Worden Road got slammed.
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John gifted me a bottle of the 2020 Abbey Ridge the other day. I thought it was excellent, and I didn’t notice any smoke taint at all. I had a 2020 Ribbon Ridge during the summer, and it had a little bit of smoke in the finish. I asked Tom (ass’t winemaker) about it, and he said that he thought the Ribbon Ridge was the only wine they made that showed any smoke.
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I’ve had two bottles of the 2020 Ribbon Ridge and did not notice any off flavors, but I’m not ageing them. I also received those offers and thought about buying my normal amount, but I’m just not willing to take the chance both in money and opportunity costs. I instead loaded up on 19s knowing I’d have a hole where the 20s would have been.
I tasted the Cristom WV at the winery, maybe I’m just sensitive to smoke taint, but it was awful and lingered for an hour. I was actually upset that they poured it, that visit was almost a year ago and it’s one of two tasting experiences I remember vividly, thankfully the Goodfellow No. 15 is remembered for it’s amazing aromatics.
The importer I work with in London that has (in my opinion) the best Oregon portfolio (including Goodfellow, Patricia Green, Vincent, Brick House, Cameron and many others) has seemingly passed on the 20’s. They’ve instead started bringing forward the 21’s. I’m bummed because if those producers had made wines they felt worth releasing in 20 I would have purchased (though I know some of the names above have either scaled back drastically on the 20’s or haven’t released them at all).
FWIW - Marcus was kind enough to host me this past weekend, and I didn’t pick up on any smoke issues in the Goodfellow wines. Many of the others I visited weren’t releasing 2020s though (Patricia Green, Beaux Freres, Antica Terra). Beaux Freres did release one 2020 pinot, which they call the “Early Bird,” and it’s made from the few grapes they harvested before the fires.
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Did he pour any of his 2020s? The Heritage 15 is a 2019 vintage.
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I don’t know if Marcus has even bottled any 2020 reds yet. I’ve had the 2020 WV Chardonnay, and it’s fantastic. I bought one case and have another on order. I believe he only has one higher level Chardonnay in 2020 and I have a case of that on order too.
That’s A & B Vintners. Great company. Love them. I don’t know if they passed so much as there was either little to no wine to buy from most of their winery partners in 2020. Maybe a little of both.
We bottled a little over 800 cases of a Pinot Noir made from pre-smoke grapes. It mostly went out to our distributors as I wanted nothing to do with the vintage. We also bottled a large amount of a wine that definitely had a minor level of impact that I felt like I was able to bury under an avalanche of winemaking bullshit.It retailed at $16 and people snapped it up. Even at 6,500 cases it went fast. I remain a huge skeptic of any red wine from these parts made in 2020. I’ve yet to try one that wasn’t tainted. Not saying the Cameron is, I just haven’t had it.
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I thought they were 2020s, but I’d have to ask him to confirm. I think he said they were just bottled. I was digesting a lot of information, so I just don’t remember all the details. I do remember talking to him about smoke taint and commenting that I wasn’t picking up any in his wines, which is why I’m pretty sure they were 2020s
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He says on his website that he just rinsed the grapes off after the smoke died down:
Sure hope it’s that simple!
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Ha - it’s not…
"As its name may tell you, smoke taint happens when grapes are exposed to smoke, but it’s more than just residue sitting on the grapes that cause these unpleasant flavors—and you can’t just rinse it off. When wood burns, it releases aroma compounds called volatile phenols. In the vineyard, these compounds can permeate the grape skins and rapidly bond with the sugars inside to form molecules called glycosides.
This process, called glycosylation, renders the phenols no longer volatile, meaning their smokiness cannot be detected by smell or taste. However, once the grapes are fermented, the acidity in the resulting wine will begin to break these bonds, rendering the phenols volatile once again.
This typically happens during fermentation, but can continue to occur after the wine has been bottled. It can even happen right as you take a sip: The enzymes in your mouth are able to break down any glycosides that remain, and the undesirable aromas can be vaporized as you taste—a wine might smell fine but taste off."
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Thanks for the commentary Jim, especially the last bit about reds from the area. Looking forward to some solid 21’s when they come out.
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Yeah. That’s not a thing.
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I’m just about finished tasting for my Pacific Northwest Report and received a handful of 2020 Pinot Noir and Gamay samples. Two producers were extremely transparent with the difficulties faced while others approached the submittal like ‘business as usual’. I understand that knowingly releasing a wine that is compromised won’t necessarily be noticed by a percentage of consumers. It is a calculated risk but thinking they will slip through a knowledgeable tasting without being noticed is naive at best.
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I didn’t bottle any 2020 reds but three early to drink, low priced Gamay, Pinot Gris and Pinot Noir from the best lots I had. The rest I sold off - mostly Eola Hills Pinot Noir - or some I blended away. I think the wines were solid. I didn’t feel comfortable bottling vineyard designate reds or anything about terroir really. Just regional wines.
On the 2020 white side, I love all three wines - Pinot Blanc, Chardonnay Tardive, and Chardonnay Royer Vineyard. The latter wine is slated for the UK in spring ‘23. I didn’t have any 2020 reds to offer them though I tried to see if they liked the ‘21 red Pinot Gris. No. However the ‘21 single vineyard Pinots from barrel were showing very nicely.
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Andrew,
Elizabeth Tomasino from Oregon State University went to work on looking for compounds other than those tested for (guaiacols and cresols) because correlation is so low. She found a set of thiol phenols that correlate more closely with perception of smoke taint. The rough news is that these are fairly stable molecules, but they do eventually break down.
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We just released a 2020 WV Pinot Noir. Made just about 700 cases of primarily press wine. The remaining puncheons are still in the winery except for what Lynsee distilled for us.
The 2020 WV Pinot Noir has seen the same avalanche of winemaking bullshit and perhaps more(carbon fined pre-malo, SRX, R-O filtration twice, and a very effective lees product). No treatment was a silver bullet, but is a pretty reasonable and tasty wine. It went out to distribution, with no pressure on any of our distributor partners to participate. Roanoke has reordered already, which is great. It’s a $26-28 wine in most places and while less “Goodfellow” than typical, it’s a wine that I actually enjoy.
Whether we release anything else remains to be seen, but it’s a bummer to hear that people are still saying wines weren’t impacted. There were 6 major forest fires basically surrounding the Valley in 2020 and then an inversion so the smoke just stayed on.
I tested every vineyard we work with from 4 different AVAs and everything had some impact. Fir Crest was the lowest but even that had some. I’d rather openly talk about how to handle smoke than run around pretending it didn’t happen.
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Yes, or to a far less degree than the Pinot Noirs.
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Hi Marcus,
Thanks for letting me know of this research. It is always comforting when the scientists findings at least seem to fit with observations in the field.
I appreciate the open discussion on the topic. It’s not going away. I may bug you about how your solutions worked and or their limits. My limited successes have been with bigger reds and with whites. Pinot and smoke seem difficult.
Do you have a link handy to that study? If not, I can dig around. Thanks again!
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