You might have heard the term ‘smoke taint’ by some Australian wine makers over the past few years, and you might be wondering what smoke taint is and how it affects your wine.

Think of grapes a bit like a sponge – they are porous and can suck up parts of their surrounding environment. In Australia and the USA, the wine making process can be affected dramatically by extreme weather or events. Australia has had more than its fair share of fires in the past few years with most of our states having various fires in the past 5 years. 2020 was particularly bad in NSW, for instance with places like Mudgee losing everything that was grown to this mysterious smoke taint.

Smoke from fires can do a few things, one is that strong wind during the fire which is good for the grapes and vines but obviously bad for fire crews and causes the fire to spread. If the wind moves the smoke along quickly then the grapes are less likely to suffer from smoke taint, when smoke hangs around and sits heavy in the air for periods of time this is when it gets really bad. When the risk of smoke taint from fires is expected, grape growers and wineries can send their grapes off for analysis to various laboratories who will test them to see the percentage of smoke taint. The winery then makes the decision to go ahead with trying to produce a wine from those grapes.

Think of the scale a bit like this –
1. The faintest hint of smoke may be from a far away back burn 100kms or more away and the faintest breath of wind blows it away and you forget about it.
2. A shirt or blouse that you were wearing near the campfire the night before on holidays
3. a dirty ashtray that has lots of cigarette butts in it

Some grapes might find that a hint of smoke adds to the wine in some circumstances like Cabernet Sauvignon or a Shiraz that sometimes has a tiny hint of smoke can add to that tobacco leaf or chocolate notes that comes from the variety.

Rest assured that winemakers won’t just make wine out of really badly smoked tainted grapes, they will generally drop those grapes to the ground and let them turn into compost. Some winemakers do trials with them and sell the grape to the guys from Archie Rose who make amazing gins. They have turned their hand at making an eau de vie from smoke tainted grapes in the Hunter Valley. Through the distillation process, they were able to strip the smoke from the grape. This has been a win-win for the growers as they get some money for the smoke tainted grapes and we, as the consumer, get another lovely beverage to drink.

At the end of the day growing grapes is farming and mother nature completely dictates what happens to the wine each year. It’s hard and it hurts our winemaking friends when bush fires happen just before picking but sometimes it helps to make delicious products!