46 Wines & Vines JULY 2009

Are these the best or worst of times for Mendocino County winemaker Larry Londer? Recently, his 2007 Londer Vineyards Paraboll Pinot Noir and Corby Chardonnay

earned top marks from editors at Wine Spectator. At the same time, he described 2008 as his most challenging vintage ever.

He’s not alone. Hundreds of other North Coast producers are re-examining the 2008 vintage before bottling. Those whose vineyards were affected by wildfire smoke face tough choices about process-ing and finishing those wines.

For Londer, the journey began June 22, 2008, the day after an electrical storm ignited 2,000 wildfires in 17 counties across Northern California. Having faced an unpredictable spring, Londer surveyed his vineyard from Highway 128 near Philo, wondering what other unforeseen challeng-es the 2008 harvest could possibly yield.

“I couldn’t see the ridgeline on either side of the highway,” says the ophthal-mologist and owner of Londer Vineyards.

With wildfires burning near the towns of Boonville and Philo, a ribbon of smoke uncoiled across the Anderson Valley like an interminable, fire-breathing serpent. A layer of cool, dense marine air trapped

smoke beneath the skyline and pushed the falling ash into Sonoma and Lake counties. (See Wines & Vines, January 2009, page 64).

“Last year, we expe-rienced every plague except the locusts,” he says. “Twenty-one freez-ing nights, little water, wind during flowering, a heat spike in May, wild-fires in June and July, frost again during harvest and a heavy rain during crush.

“We’ve overcome every challenge ex-cept the smoke,” he says.

For weeks after the Mendocino wildfires began, however, Londer thought more about his crew than the vines he hired them to tend. Recalling his days as a medical student caring for patients during a pulmonary rota-tion, he dispensed masks to his field crew.

“I was worried that the thick smoke that settled over the vineyard could affect them for years to come,” he recalls.

Woodland smoke contains volatile compounds, including carbonyls, esters, organic acids and phenols. Combustion ruptures long phenolic chains into frag-ments that scientists from the Australian

When the Smoke ClearedCalifornia winemakers face tough pre-bottling decisions for 2008 wines

By Thomas Ulrich

Smoke from the Mendocino Lightning Complex wildfire climbs the hillside near Londer Vineyards. Wildfires burned across California in June 2008.

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Wine Research Institute (AWRI) attribute to smoke—aromas and flavor that in small concentrations a sommelier might describe as gamey or spicy, as in a French Côte-Rôtie or Italian Taurasi, but which in greater concentrations taste like ashes and feel like sandpaper rubbing against the back of your throat.

Like an unmasked fieldworker, grape-vines ingest smoke. The latest research from the Department of Agriculture and Food Western Australia suggests that vines absorb severed volatile compounds through the stomata of the leaves, storing them in the wood until ripening fruit trig-gers the plants to transport the aromatics to the epidermal layers of the grapes. (The term “taint” is often used for the smoke

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effect, but research for this article un-covered no indication that smoky wines present a health concern.)

Londer sent the field crew home after they worked four hours in the vineyard. Fully contained by July 19, the Mendo-cino wildfire charred 54,817 acres and affected most of the grapes grown in the Anderson and Ukiah valleys.

Anderson Valley fruitLonder learned what Australians had al-ready discovered from the brushfires that raged in drought-stricken northeast Vic-toria during 2003 and 2006. Grapes are most susceptible to smoke damage from one week after veraison until harvest.

Winemaker Rick Davis, who managed Londer’s 2008 vintage, admits that all the Pinot Noir and Chardonnay grapes that field hands harvested for the Mendo-cino County producer smelled like wood smoke or Lapsang Souchong tea.

Scientists attribute the smoky and spicy aromas and flavors in part to guaiacol (Gu) and 4-methyl guaiacol (4MGu), compounds they have identified in wines aged in toasted oak barrels. Both compounds take shape when heat decomposes lignin, an organic polymer present in all vascular plants.

“The Australians chose two markers (guaiacol and 4-methyl guaiacol) that are found in trace amounts or not normally present in wine that hasn’t been exposed to toasted oak or smoke,” explains Dr. Eric Hervé, a research chemist for ETS Laboratories in Napa.

ETS scientists measure minute concen-trations of guaiacol and 4-methyl guaiacol with a gas chromatograph and mass spec-trometer. The gas chromatograph separates the volatile compounds by passing the

sample through a 30-foot column, and the mass spectrometer fractures each com-pound into a pattern that the spectrometer can identify and detect in concentrations less than one part-per-billion (ppb).

Sensing that something was wrong well before the grapes reached the sorting table, Davis consulted academic journals and other winemakers for answers. Todd Quigley, a seasoned winemaker who assisted Davis, anticipated the tainted harvest from the first day of summer and offered to help.

Davis and Quigley developed a method

for reducing guaiacol and 4-methyl guaia-col by adjusting how workers at the winery pressed, fined and fermented tainted grapes.

For Chardonnay, they loaded the press with whole clusters of fruit, added PVPP (polyvinylpolypyrrolidone) and isinglass, pressed the juice into a settling tank, clari-fied it with additional fining agents, racked it clean, and then added yeast hulls to re-place the suspended solids that the polymers and proteins had separated from solution.

“We sent samples to ETS (to measure guaiacol and 4-methyl guaiacol concen-trations),” Londer says. “The results dem-

Highlights• northern California winemakers are

exploring imaginative ways to tackle wildfire smoke issues in wine.

• research about the effect of wildfires on winegrapes continues to spark interest for scientists from australia and the U.S.

• Winemakers and vineyard managers are sharing best practices for alleviating the sensory effects of smoke.

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48 Wines & Vines JULY 2009

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onstrated that we do not have a problem with Chardonnay.”

Davis and Quigley faced a daunting challenge with Pinot Noir, because the juice remains in contact with the skins during fermentation. Wine made from tainted Pinot Noir grapes can contain up to five times more guaiacol than the fruit.

For a varietal that continues to earn high marks for Londer from critics and colleagues alike, they added PVPP and

isinglass during cold soak, reduced punch-downs and mixed untoasted oak flour with the fermenting juice of the most heavily tainted fruit.

Reducing smoke compounds“Before fermentation,” Quigley says, “we racked off the lees so that we could remove the bound phenols from solution. For the heavily fined juice, we added un-toasted granular oak to boost tannins and pigment, because isinglass tends to strip it of anthocyanins.”

While they reduced smoke compounds in four batches of Pinot Noir initially, the concentrations of guaiacol and 4-methyl guaiacol later returned to pre-fermentation levels for some lots of wine. According to research reported in the Journal of Agricul-tural and Food Chemistry, phenol con-centrations can increase during malolactic fermentation, suggesting the presence of one or more precursor compounds.

“We are unhappy with at least two of nine lots of Pinot Noir,” Londer says.

Blending tainted with untainted wine to obscure the unwanted sensory properties is not a practical option. Scientists report that smoke’s sensory imprint can persist

A tasting of seven samples of smoke-

affected wines before and after pro-

cessing gave a snapshot of how small

a trace can be detected by trained palates,

and how large an amount can effectively

be removed. The samples were prepared

by Mavrik north america, and consisted of

unfinished 2008 wines the Santa rosa, Ca-

lif., company had processed using reverse

osmosis in a technique the company calls

nanofiltration. Several other companies also

provide advanced filtration services.

The unfinished wines we tasted came

from California vineyards affected by wildfire

smoke. They spanned an area as far south as

the Central Coast, as far north as Willits and

including places in between like dry Creek

Valley and napa-Carneros.

Concentrations of guaiacol (one of the pri-

Tasting smoke-affected wines

Larry Londer reviews his notes while tasting samples of smoke-affected wines.

JIM G

or

do

n

(Continued on page 50)

W I N E M A K I N G

Wines & Vines JULY 2009 49

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mary smoke taint compounds) as low as 6

parts per billion were distinguishable in the

“before” sample of an anderson Valley Char-

donnay as earthy aromas and an ash-like

flavor and finish. The sensory threshold is

believed to be 2 ppb. after processing, the

wine showed no smoke, a touch of butter

and light apple flavors.

at the other extreme, a 2008 Merlot

sample from the Willits area of Mendocino

was measured at 220 parts per billion. The

“before” sample had very strong, rubber-tire

and burnt-rubber attributes from the aroma

to the bitter, ash-like finish. The “after” ver-

sion was firm, tannic, with modest fruit fla-

vor but only slightly smoky.

a sample of Pinot noir from the Central

Coast, with 15.5 ppb, had a slightly ashy

aroma and smoky flavors before process-

ing, along with appropriate varietal charac-

ter, while in the “after” version the ash and

smoke seemed to disappear and the fruit

flavors turned fresh. an alexander Valley

Cabernet Sauvignon at 20.4 ppb had notice-

able smoky character and very masked fruit

“before,” while the “after” version showed

convincing fruit flavors, a juicy texture and

lingering, pleasant finish.

It was clear that processing helped the

wines—significantly in some cases. Unclear

to many winemakers was how such processed

wines will evolve in sensory characteristics

as they are blended, bottled and released.

—Jim Gordon

Mavrik North America sets up samples to show sensory properties before and after filtration.

W I N E M A K I N G

50 Wines & Vines JULY 2009

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after diluting 1 part of tainted with 50 parts of untainted wine. But data gleaned from the analysis of Londer’s Pinot Noir, even with its seemingly contradictory results, points the way forward.

Three Pinot Noir clones grafted to the same rootstock, planted in adjacent vineyard blocks separated only by a change in eleva-tion and ripening date, yielded three differ-ent concentrations of smoke compounds.

AWRI scientists evaluating the 2006-07 bushfires in northeast Victoria deter-mined that concentrations of guaiacol and 4-methyl guaiacol are greater in fruit from vines growing in areas where smoke accumulates naturally.

Looking for answers, Londer sent samples of Pinot Noir to Mavrik North America (MNA) for filtration (see sidebar).

“We reduced the taint by prefining,” Londer admits, “but that lessened the ef-fectiveness of filtering the wine.”

Much like the weather, deciphering the effect of the Mendocino wildfire on North Coast grapes is a complex task. According to Londer, “It’s a question of geography and timing—the location of the vines and their stage of development when the smoke hits.”

Good resultsIn spite of what he describes as his most difficult vintage, he is pleased with two or three of his Pinot Noir blends. “We plan to bottle one-quarter of the 5,500 cases that the winery produces in a typical year,” Londer says.

The rest of the vintage will remain in stor-age tanks until he and his winemakers de-termine the next step for the 2008 vintage.

Ukiah Valley fruitFueled by wildfires that surrounded the Ukiah Valley, a haze covered the vineyards during the first five or six days of last summer. By the end of the week, so much smoke from so many directions gathered in the valley that the wind could not clear the air. Some vineyards sat in smoke for nearly five weeks.

Paul Dolan, co-owner of the Mendocino Wine Co., helped launch his company’s counter-attack. Mendocino Wine Co. bot-tles Parducci Family Farmed, Big Yellow Cab, Zig Zag Zin, Tusk’N Red, Sketch-book and Paul Dolan Vineyards labels.

According to winemaker Bob Swain, the Bordeaux varieties and Pinot Noir were most susceptible to smoke damage from the wildfires. At first, the winery team

experimented by fining the juice with milk and egg whites—without success.

So the winery team adopted a nanofil-tration technique developed by scientists at MNA to separate water, alcohol and smoke compounds from everything else in the wine. As a second step in the tech-nique, they relied on a tailored adsorbtive media to remove the smoke compound from the initial separation.

“I prefer nanofiltration to other filtering techniques, because the filter works at lower pressures,” Swain says. Recogniz-ing that free-run juice from whole bunch pressings contained less smoke than pressed fractions, team members separat-ed free-run from hard-pressed juice.

“For Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc grapes, we separated the pressed frac-tion—approximately 15% of the juice—and fermented separately,” Swain says.

For Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Pinot Noir, the team filtered the complete pressing. “We’ve looked at the flavor pro-files for each variety, and believe that we are removing the compounds that cause smoke taint,” Dolan says.

Watching results unfoldSwain has already bottled the 2008

(Continued from page 48)

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Wines & Vines JULY 2009 51

GWKent_Dir07 11/13/06 1:12 PM Page 1

Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir. Typi-cally, he ages the Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot in the barrel for as long as 18 months.

“We are very pleased with the results of the nanofiltration, but will be closely watching the wines as they mature,” Swain says.

Bonterra VineyardsLike Rick Davis and Todd Quigley, Bob Blue, winemaker for Bonterra Vine-yards, faced the problem immediately. “Following the Australian protocol,” Blue says, “we harvested at night to keep the white grapes cool and made an aggressive press cut. The result was that the free run was perfect, and the press fraction had the smoke flavors. There was nothing we could do on the red grapes, but fortunately a significant number of locations and varieties were not affected.”

In a scene that played out at Bonterra shortly after fermentation of the white wines and after malolactic fermentation for the red wines, a cellarman pumped the pressed fraction for the white wine or the entire pressing of the red past a reverse osmosis filter.

A variety of companies employ reverse osmosis and filtration techniques to remove smoke compounds from the wine and grape juice.

W I N E M A K I N G

52 Wines & Vines JULY 2009

BilletTransportation

Following a protocol developed by scientists at Winesecrets, a small portion of the liquid diffused through the mem-brane and then a carbon filter. The liquid recombined with the portion of wine that was left behind when it diffused through the membrane. The wine continued to circulate through the system, and Blue sampled it until he could not detect the smoke compounds. “It worked amazingly well,” Blue says.

Well enough that his latest releases, the 2008 Mendocino Rosé and Sauvignon Blanc, have received excellent reviews.

Beyond MendocinoLonder, Dolan and other Mendocino winemakers did not face the California wildfires alone. Eight of the state’s 10 largest wildfires started during the sum-mer’s first thunderstorm. Parts of Trinity and Napa counties were ablaze by June 23, 2008. Smoke from the Anderson Valley and the Covelo fire funneled into Lake and Sonoma counties. The 163,000-acre Big Sur fire burned from June 21 until July 27, affecting vineyards in Monterey County. Fieldworkers harvested smoke-tainted grapes from Lake, Mendocino, Monterey, Napa, Sonoma and Trinity counties.

Bob Blue sums up the sentiments of many Northern California vintners who developed a plan, then tackled the smoke problem shortly after they harvested the fruit. “The wildfires were upsetting, and the smoke taint worrisome,” Blue says, “but we handled it.”

A regular contributor to Wines & Vines, Thomas Ulrich wrote “A Perfect Storm” for the January 2009 issue. Based in Silicon Valley, Ulrich has written news and feature stories for Time magazine, the Christian Science Monitor and the Washington Post. He teaches journal-ism at San Jose State University. Contact him through edit@winesandvines.com.

Smoke damage: 10 things to know • Grapes are most susceptible to smoke damage from one week after veraison until harvest.

• Smoke compounds enter grapevines through the stomata of the leaves and can reside in the stems and the leaves.

• After veraison, vines store smoke compounds in the epidermal layers of the grapes.

• Concentrations of smoke compounds are higher in machine-harvested than hand-picked fruit.

• Prolonged exposure to smoke reduces yield.

• Free-run juice from whole-bunch pressings contains less smoke taint than pressed fractions.

• Trace levels of smoke compounds found in free-run juice can increase during fermentation and again in finished wine.

• Smoke effects increase with longer maceration times.

• Smoke aromas and flavors can persist after diluting 1 part of tainted with as much as 50 parts of untainted wine.

• Growth and yield can decrease significantly in the year following heavy exposure to smoke.

T.U.

W I N E M A K I N G