Questions about smoke taint

WINE TALK
1

A new posting on CT regarding the 2008 Peay Scallop Shelf Pinot cited it for smoke taint. A few months ago, I wrote a note about the 2008 Peay Pomarium Pinot that cited an unpleasant “hickory smoke.” I did not notice it in the 2008 white wines from Peay, which get far less skin contact, obviously, so that doesn’t really relate to the reds.

My questions are:

  1. Is smoke taint something that will get worse over time while in bottle? I have no idea.

  2. Do different people have different thresholds for noticing smoke, akin to TCA? I’m guessing yes based on my taste of the 2008 Copain Rose (2008 Copain Pinot Noir Tous Ensemble Rosé, USA, California, North Coast, Anderson Valley - CellarTracker) and the mixed notes about it. I had it at the winery, took one sip, said oooh that’s smokey and they whisked it off the table forthwith since I had just finished asking them about their exposure in general. IIRC they didn’t sell any Mendo Pinot that year because of smoke issues.

  3. Which producers were ultimately most affected by the 2008 fires? Peay was, as the crow flies, geographically closer to the fires than some, but also set to the West. Few of the available TNs mention smoke, nor does the IWC. I just found the newsletter on their site and the Peay note on the Pomarium did mention “hickory smoke.” Should have been a red flag I guess?

I’m not convinced there is a problem here although I suppose it could be an excuse to try a Scallop Shelf. I’ll be a little bummed to have a few hundred dollars of smoky PN on my hands.

2

For sure, there is a wide range of sensitivity to the smoke taint compound(s). Look back at discussions of '08 Anthill Farms Anderson Valley blend. A bunch of people tasting the same wine at the same time, some finding it undrinkable, others claiming no problem at all, and some in between. There are various claims that have been made that the smoke taint from 2008 has gotten worse over time in bottle, but I can’t quite see how that would happen. Perhaps the smoky compounds become more prominent as the fruity baby fat recedes??

3

Thanks Lewis.

Yeah, that was my theory as well. If that’s correct, then the better play in 08 would have to make winemaking decisions with an eye towards early drinking (for Pinots in the smokey zone, anyway). However, that would have entailed acknowledging some degree of exposure and then having to trust that customers would not endeavor to skip the vintage entirely. Or maybe the winemakers were overly optimistic? I’m not sure how many wines are in fact affected. I’ve only had a tiny handful of 08 Pinots but if I am somewhat more sensitive to smoke I might as well drink em up young.

This is the sort of issue that wine journalists and critics could be helpful with, except that most of them have written positive notes on a bevy of wines and are unlikely to admit that they missed or misunderstood something.

4

I have found so far that with more time in the bottle the wines are less perceptibly smoky.
They seem to taste better on day 2 or 3 than they do upon opening which has to have something to do with exposure to oxygen.
For me most wines were best served with BBQ, blue cheese etc. in an white wine glass with a slight chill.
Smoked sea salt used in dishes such as potato and leek soup have worked very well also.
Crab chips, potato chips seasoned with old bay, were quite nice as well.
Cuban/good cigars are a great pairing as well on the epically on the golf course.
That vintage was tough to all involved and one of the many reasons we need rain now and to hope for some late spring rains to lower the fire danger for every vintage to come.

5

was 2008 the year Peay declassed the pommarium(can’t remember if it was 2006 or 2008) and what was there reasoning?

6

Peay made a Pomarium in 2008. I had a 2009 last night that was fantastic. I haven’t tried the '08 yet

7

There are RO membranes that are smoke taint specific and can remove the taint, although that would be interventionalist, and I’m sure most people on this board would be opposed to removing the natural terrior of the smoke.
Unless the fire was set by an arsonist, so then I guess THAT would be interventionalist, in which case using RO would be restoring the wine to it’s natural state. [wow.gif] [berserker.gif]

8

Nice!

9

Never though about it that way before. Unfortunately the fires were started by dry lightning.

10

That makes sense, but this research summary suggests that fermentation raises the levels of smoke compounds dramatically compared to fresh juice, even for wines fermented without skins. So it’s not a simple matter of the smoke elements being transferred from skin to wine.

It might be that, because whites mature sooner, they would be affected differently – positively or negatively – since the worst fires were in June, I believe. Just a thought.

11

Yeah I remember the night of the lighting storm. Was camping out at Lake Mendo when the deluge hit. Woke up in the morning to not being able to see 15 feet in front of me on the road in Ukiah.

12

Copain declassified alot (maybe all) of their vineyards in Anderson Valley in 08 into their Tous Ensemble. Have drank about 5 bottles to date and maybe 2 - 3 of them early on had a little smoke on nose but definitely not to its detriment. Last 2 I have drunk there has been no sign of smoke. IIRC the winery did some heavy filtering of this wine. So in my experience it seems the smoke can go away.

13

From our observations the white vs red appears to have a double edge. If a white is more than a tiny bit tainted the aroma stands out, since it is not integrated with the tannins and toasty oak notes found in a barrel aged red. From what we have seen, some reds can handle (slightly) more smoke and still be nice wines, particularly Syrah but perhaps others as well. Pinot may be the worst of both worlds in terms of smoke, since it is skin fermented but tends to be a more delicate wine. In 03 there was a fire which affected some of our PN. We sold it cheap in the super market with a sign that said “FIRE SALE”. neener

Some people loved it and still ask if we have some left. I think it was the $10 price tag they liked, but they did drink it.

Our one experience with smoke affected white was our 08 Mendocino Arneis. We were able to reduce the levels of smoke to below most people’s threshold of perception using clean lees from our other white wines. Strangely to me, some of our customers liked it better than the 09. Smokers?

My 5 cents.

14

Thanks for the info, Andrew.

I was curious about this:

You transferred lees to the smoke-affected wine? How did this help?

15

Firstly, we were more careful than usual to separate the harder press juice.

Then, when we racked the smoke affected Arneis, we also racked our not smoked Sauvignon Blancs. We added the SB lees to the Arneis, stirred and let settle. Then racked off of those lees.

On on bench top trail, the results were nothing short of a miracle. When we treated the whole batch, I’d say it reduced the smoke by 75%.

As far as I can tell, the reason it helps is that yeast absorbs certain compounds very well, and smoke compounds are among them.

HTH.

16

I had one small lot of PN that was affected by the fires in 2008. Unsurprisingly, my approach was exactly the opposite of the prevailing conventional wisdom. Fully extracted, high proportion of fairly well-toasted new barrels… I was fortunate to be invited to taste RO trials with some colleagues and determined that it was not going to achieve what I was after, so I did nothing while trying to figure out what to actually do - if anything. The wine was in barrel for 30 months and during this period, and it seemed to heal itself for the most part as time passed. So, I decided to let better continue to happen. The net result was that a normally $50 bottle of fine PN became a $22 bottle of delicious red wine that people kept coming back for until it was gone.

At the time I thought it was probably polymerization that would bind up the smoky products coupled with some yeast adsorption - possibly a redox effect as well (evident in days’ open samples). Since then, a series of Australian review articles seem to indicate that the new, toasted oak and yeast lees actually adsorb the offensive compounds. The oak adsorption part was a surprise. Also, they indicated that depending on the physiological state of the vines when the smoke contact occurs, the smoky compounds can either be more closely associated with solid tissues or with the juice. This could explain why people’s experiences regarding extraction/pressing have been so variable. Finally, it was outlined in these articles that when employing RO to reduce the smokiness that there would be a rebound effect from bound forms of the guiacol releasing more of the free form (involved with the sensory effect) to the wine. It makes me think that with no RO, there should be less risk of increase in smokiness in the bottle. Therefore, as usual, generalizations will fail to fully describe the population.

Cheers,

F

17

Alex and Fred – Thanks for the insights! Fascinating stuff!

18

I’m not into all the scientific/oenological angles of this but I did buy a sampler of Navarro’s 2008 Indian Creek red bottlings which they ‘down-labeled’ because of smoke concerns. Even I, with my high TCA threshold, had NO problem smelling the smoke in these wines. It was more obvious in some varieties than in others, but it was unmistakable. Overall, though, the aroma did seem to subside in the glass enough to be able top enjoy the wines. I bought them because they were a good buy and also for the experience of it. Not sure I’d do it again.

19

Do you mean me? [snort.gif]