For those science heads, I’m asking if anyone knows of any published studies that have sampled the grapes just prior to smoke exposure to compare with post exposure marker levels? That would give a much more meaningful measure of true uptake of said markers due to exposure.
Vineyards I know of that have taken samples from years without smoke exposure to obtain baseline data have often seen large variances in certain markers that are probably part of normal vintage character variation. Example: One site had levels in 2022 (a non-exposure season) that would have been cause for rejection in an exposure season. So that tells me that one must factor in the baseline for each individual season vs general pooled numbers.
I fear a lot of worthy fruit will be rejected this year in certain areas, just as in 2020.
I’m still using the micro-ferment/sensory method to assess risk should an exposure event take place. It’s worked in the past.
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I’m still in denial about needing to learn about smoke taint- even after farming grapes exposed in 2017, 2018, 2020, 2022, 2025, 2026…
Susan Ebler at UCD is doing American Vineyard Foundation research on baselines, and here is a paper comparing 5 vintages of Pinot baseline data: https://www.ajevonline.org/content/ajev/5/Suppl_1/4.full.pdf
Lastly, ETS has proprietary data that, if you submit a sample with the grape cultivar, you can get your data compared to 95% and 99% of non-smoke affected grapes of that cultivar. They call it a “Smoke Impact Comparative Report” and it shows marker by marker how your sample compares to their internal dataset (that they collected from generous users in non-smoke years).
There is still a gap between grapes that have been tainted by smoke and wine that has detectable smoke influence.
Adding this for posterity- current data presented by Arran Rumbaugh of ARS at the 2026 Smoke Summit said “the ARS has established baseline levels of smoke compounds, finding that the baseline varies by cultivar, but not by vintage or geographic region”.
These baselines should have been available for this harvest season (although I couldn’t find any using my remedial skills).