Image of a hand holding up a smoky glass of red wine. The background depicts a vineyard and wildfire smoke.
Article

How Does Wildfire Smoke Affect Wine?

While some alcoholic beverages contain smoky notes, wildfires can impart a unique flavor to a bottle of red wine.

Written byLaura Tran, PhD
| 2 min read
Top Image credit:modified from © istock.com, Horned_Rat, aivctr, Viktoriia Patapova, Juliaart; designed by Erin Lemieux

There’s nothing quite like sipping a glass of red wine on a warm summer evening. Unfortunately, summer also brings the growing threat of wildfires, which have become more frequent and intense worldwide. These fires don’t just threaten landscapes—they can also impact vineyards, where grapes act like sponges and soak up the smoke.

Image of a smoke experiment set up on top of a section of grapes in a vineyard.

Cole Cerrato used a greenhouse-like set up to conduct smoke experiments in Oregon State University’s vineyard.

Cole Cerrato

But what exactly makes wine taste like an ashtray? According to Cole Cerrato, a food science chemist who studies the impact of smoke exposure on grapes at Oregon State University, this unpleasant taste arises when grape skins absorb volatile chemicals from the smoke. In the pulp, they bind with sugars, forming compounds responsible for “smoke taint.”

“It’s different than barrel aging, where you can get hints of smoke or woodiness. [Smoke taint] is a lot more aggressive on the palate,” remarked Cerrato. This predominately affects red wines, particularly Pinot Noir, though white wines can also be affected.

However, winemakers can’t always tell the extent of impact by just tasting grapes, as factors such as fire distance, wind speed, and sunlight exposure all play a role. Moreover, the impact might not reveal itself until fermentation or later during the aging process, when sugar-bound phenols break free, releasing the unmistakable smoky taste.

“We've known that the phenols and the bound phenols were not the end of the story,” said Cerrato. In his quest to understand smoke taint, Cerrato built makeshift greenhouses to expose grapes to smoke and then made wine from the harvest. Using liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry, he and his colleagues found a new class of sulfur-containing phenols, thiophenols—normally found in meat and fish, but not wine—that contributed to the distinct flavor of smoke-impacted wine.1

Cerrato noted that mitigation strategies, such as spray coatings, can help block the unpleasant effects of smoke.2 However, he emphasized the need for more selective approaches and a deeper understanding of the chemistry behind these compounds to maintain wine quality without compromising flavor. There’s still plenty to uncork when it comes to keeping smoke out of a bottle of wine.

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