The wine industry on the Central and South Coasts has been doing booming business.
But, it's also been facing a major new concern during the last few years. Some of the large wildfires California has experienced have impacted wine grapes.
"The fruit is basically trying to protect the seed, so the skin sees the smoke as something that's harmful to the berry," said Alisa Jacobson.
"The skin of the grape kind of actually traps the smoke in the skin, to try to prevent it from going inside of the berry," said Jacobson.
She says the smoke stays in the grape's skin. Wen wine is made, and the grapes are pressed, it gets flavors from the skin. "But, when there's wildfire, that smoke can get absorbed in the skin, and that comes out in the wine," said Jacobson.
She's a winemaker who owns Turning Tide Wines, in the Santa Ynez Valley. Jacobson worked in the Sonoma Valley before moving to Santa Barbara County to start her own label in 2020.
She says Northern California winemakers really began experiencing the problem during the big wildfires seven years ago.
"2017 was really bad because a lot of people didn't know much about it yet," said Jacobson. "A lot of winemakers picked their grapes, and thought they would deal with it later," said the winemaker. "But, what happened is there's no way to deal with it. Once it's in the wine, the only way to pull it out is by heavy stripping processes, and when you try to pull out the smoke, you're also pulling out the good things you like, the flavors."
Filtering can work on some low end wines, but not on high end wines where people spent big money to get bottles with unique flavor.
Jacobson is chair of the West Coast Smoke Exposure Task Force. Winemakers in California, Oregon, and Washington State set up the group to support efforts to share information about the problem, and to lobby for federal aid to study it.
"Is there something we can do in the vineyards to protect the grapes?," asked Anita Oberholster, who is a professor of Cooperative Extension in Enology, Enology is the study of wine, and winemaking.
She’s one of the leading researchers focused on this problem.
"Is there a treatment option?" asked Oberholster. "Is there a way to remove the smoke impact, and still have a great wine?"
The researcher admits it’s only in the last few years they’ve been able to get financial support for efforts to study the problem.
Researchers said an important objective is to see if they can develop a way to tell if a grape’s exposure to smoke has reached the point where its unusable for wine. That could save winemakers hundreds of million of dollars. Because the smoke is in the grape’s skin, you can’t tell by tasting the grapes.
They say one thing we do know is that smoke from distant fires isn’t a big issue. It’s concentrated smoke from large, nearby fires. With winemaking and wildfires both major elements in our region, it’s yet another major concern for local vintners.
