Smoke-tainted grapes often don't taste smoky. The smoke can stay chemically "hidden" until fermentation, and even your own saliva can release those smoky components when you drink the wine.
"Now that's secondhand smoking"
-was a worded Reel I posted on June 28, and it got me thinking about smoke taint, smoke flavors, and how they relate to wine and taste.
Now, if you are like me, the word taint always gives me a chuckle, partly because of how it sounds and the actual place it's found, so I was particularly interested in the smoke taint of the wine world. Kudos to the guy who named it that.
This summer, we saw an unprecedented amount of fires all over the world, and for the last few years these have especially become a problem for wine.
Smoke.
Not on the grapes' skin. Inside them.
So it's no surprise that the fire doesn't have to touch the vineyard or even be on the same property. Smoke can drift in from a wildfire burning hundreds of miles away.
I live in New York City, and for the last three summers we now have to look forward to the city being blanketed with smoke from wildfires in Canada—and that's a whole other country.
And so, yes, the grapes absorb it quietly, invisibly, weeks before anyone tastes what's wrong.
And this got me thinking...
When Does Smoke Become Taint?
Guaiacol is one of the compounds involved. Grapes absorb volatile phenols from smoke and convert many of them into sugar-bound glycosides. Those can later release volatile phenols during fermentation and even in the mouth, which helps explain that delayed, smoky or ashy perception.
It doesn't care about your vintage, your vineyard, or your grapes. It doesn't care that you've been nursing this harvest for a whole year. Once it's in the air, chances are it might get into your production, and that's a mighty big concern for producers every year.
Winemakers have a host of mitigation approaches, including activated carbon, reverse osmosis, and blending. Activated carbon can work.
But it can also act as a blunt instrument, stripping out more than just the smoke—the fruit, the florals, the actual personality of the wine.
A few summers ago, back in my wine rep days, I was out with a Californian producer who was in town doing a work-with. He has these amazing certified organic, classic California wines in Yountville. These were not cheap wines, per se, so it's always nice to do a work-with.
I remember everywhere we went, he would tell the story about picking grapes as the mountains were on fire, and he was especially proud that his harvest that year didn't taste smoky.
Researching this article helped me understand more than ever why that was such a big talking point for him.
Smoke migrates.
A discovery from less than a year ago has now become the focus of attention.
Researchers isolated two strains from Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay grape leaves that could use guaiacol as their sole carbon source in the lab.
Gordonia alkanivorans.
This is a gram-positive, rod-shaped or oval, obligate aerobic bacterium known for breaking down hydrocarbons, alkanes, and persistent environmental pollutants.
And as it turns out, this bacteria can break guaiacol down. Eat it, essentially, using it as its only food source. Researchers even identified a gene involved—something called guaA—and found that when they knocked it out, the bacteria could no longer break down guaiacol.
This is amazing news for the wine world, especially the parts of the world that have wildfires to look out for every year.
But let me be honest about where this actually stands: this is a lab discovery, not something wineries are using yet. Nobody's pouring bacteria into tanks this harvest.
But it's the first real sign of a fix that doesn't cost the wine its whole personality just to save it.
And there's something bigger sitting underneath all of this.
Who decided smoke doesn't belong there?
There is evidence that some drinkers actually like smoke-affected wine—and researchers are starting to question where "character" ends and "taint" begins.
Oregon State and New Zealand researchers gave consumers smoke-impacted Pinot Noir. They found two distinct groups:
smoke-dislikers and smoke-likers.
The people who liked the smoke-affected wines tended to already enjoy smoky flavors in food and drinks and reported greater wine knowledge. Even the way the wine was described on the label affected perception.
So the question isn't:
How do we remove smoke from wine?
It's:
Is There a Cultural Precedent for Deliberately Smoky Wine?
South Africa gives us a fascinating detour.
There is an established style known as "coffee-style Pinotage." These wines can show coffee, roasted, smoky, and other dark characteristics.
Importantly, that's not wildfire smoke taint. The character is deliberately created through winemaking, including the use of toasted oak. But consumers have accepted an intentionally smoky or roasted expression of wine as a recognizable style.
Which creates a great contradiction:
Smoke from toasted wood is winemaking.
Smoke from a forest is taint.
Which leads to the question: is smoke taint smoke flavor?
Chemically and sensorially, they're not identical, so we can't pretend they are.
But culturally?
That's a hell of a question.
The Gordonia discovery becomes very ironic. Science is working on a way to remove something we've already decided is a defect, while consumer research suggests taste isn't quite that unanimous.
And while the California producer was proud of his wine that didn't taste smoky, I was hoping it was.
Meanwhile, vineyard workers across California were dealing with what that same smoke meant for their bodies, their work, and their paychecks.
In Napa in 2020, fruit left hanging because of smoke concerns meant lost work for farmworkers. During the California wildfires, huge amounts of premium fruit were left unharvested because wineries feared smoke taint. Napa farmworkers lost significant work and income because there were grapes nobody wanted harvested.
At the same time, other vineyard workers were still physically working in wildfire smoke—some during evacuations and dangerous air conditions. Research since then has specifically documented farmworkers' disproportionate exposure to wildfire smoke.
And now, six years later, while researching this, I ask the question I didn't think to ask him then:
Would smoke necessarily have been bad if it meant lost wages and smoke inhalation for vineyard workers?
Who gets to decide what wine is supposed to taste like? The producers or the consumers?
Smoke is the real outsider in this story.
It travels in from somewhere else—a fire burning hundreds of miles away, nothing to do with this vineyard at all—and it's the one that causes the damage.
Should workers lose wages in this multibillion-dollar industry for something that is inherently not their fault?
Meanwhile, the bacteria that might actually fix it was already there.
Local. Quiet. Chilling.
Just waiting for someone to notice it.
Every Bottle Has a Journey
Migration tells us that smoke travels from somewhere else and becomes part of a grape that never went anywhere.
Science tells us the grape chemically hides what arrived, fermentation and even our own mouths can reveal it, and bacteria already living on grape leaves may eventually offer a way to break down guaiacol.
Culture is the part that is especially fascinating in all of this. The wine industry calls one kind of smoky character desirable and another kind "taint"—while some consumers apparently taste the supposedly tainted wine and say, actually, this is the type of wine I can dine with.
A bottle carries every hand that touches its journey—even the ones history forgot.
Every bottle is a passport.
This one just happens to have a lot of smoke in it — some celebrated, some history conveniently leaves off the label and the table.