New research conducted by a team of researchers from UBC’s Okanagan campus may not protect vineyards from smoke damage when there are fires, but it should help winemakers get the bad news sooner.
“We deliberately ‘smoked’ some of their vines,” said PhD candidate Matt Noestheden.
The compounds that tend to leave a smoky taste in wine were then tested over time.
“We followed these chemicals that we know taste smoky all the way from immediately after we applied the smoke all the way through until harvest and into the wine.”
What the study showed was that, once the smoke got into the grapes, it was there to stay. It could save wineries the expense of producing wine they may not want to sell anyway.
“It should be possible for us to tell the winemaker immediately after the grapes are exposed to smoke if there’s a potential for the wine to present with smoke taint.”
The project also revealed some unexpected good news for wine producers and wine lovers alike. Despite the smoky conditions that we all noticed this past summer, researchers were puzzled to find there doesn’t seem to be any smoke taint.
“For whatever reason, the 2017 vintage seems to be fine," Noestheden assured.
We’ll drink to that.
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