Two of the more intriguing and instructive wines I tasted during 2022 could serve as bookends for this year’s wine-competition circuit.
The first was in January, at the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition in Cloverdale, Sonoma County. There, my assignment was to taste best-of-class wines and write brief tasting notes on each.
One of those best-of-class wines was the Lewis Grace 2021 El Dorado Estate Rosé, which topped 25 other entries in its group on the strength of its lively fruit and on how openly it represented its pedigree – 82 percent Grenache and 18 percent Pinot Noir, all grown at the winery’s estate on Apple Hill in El Dorado County.
But I was puzzled by one aspect of the wine. Was that really a lacy thread of wildland smoke curling
through the wine’s fruit? If it was smoke, it didn’t seem to have originated with oak barrels. That would have been unlikely, given that rosés rarely are exposed to much if any wood. Besides, the apparent smoke of the wine was somewhat pungent and earthy, suggesting a burning autumnal leaf pile more than the caramel and vanilla of a toasty oak barrel.
I didn’t want to commit my suspicion to a tasting note without first checking with Lewis Grace winemakers Trevor and Tyler Grace. In an exchange of emails, Trevor Grace confirmed that smoke from last summer’s 220,000-acre Caldor Fire, which burned just southeast of the family’s vineyard and winery, had settled on their grapes.
“We did our best to mitigate it, but also accept it as a distinctive element. It’s a fine line. A silver lining in Gold Country, perhaps,” he said candidly and hopefully.
He had nothing to fret about. The wine was a hit among Louis Grace’s clientele, and quickly sold out, with consumers perhaps unaware of the smoke or seeing it as one more characteristic of the wine, more pleasurable than objectionable.
Then, last month, at Rodeo Uncorked!, the international wine competition of the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, I sensed something similarly peculiar in one of the 15 wines being weighed for best red wine by the nine judges of the competition’s concluding “super panel.”
All we were told on our judging sheets was that the wine was a blend based on grape varieties traditionally associated with Bordeaux, that it was priced between $50 and $85, and that its grapes had been grown in the “new world,” which could mean that the wine originated in Australia, California, Texas or someplace else other than Europe.
The wine was deeply colored, solidly built, ample with oak, and mouth filling with juicy fruit suggestive of cherries and olives. It also carried this faint whiff of smoke that seemed to originate from something other than oak barrel, like a curlicue of smoke rising briefly from the wick of a candle when it is snuffed out, a cherry-scented candle, at that. It wasn’t offensive, but more a curiosity that added another seam to a finely laminated wine.
It was up against some mighty stiff competition, including a strapping Tempranillo, a classically
sculptured Pinot Noir, and a juicy and spirited Montepulciano. Nevertheless, the Bordeaux-inspired blend was elected the competition’s best red wine. When we later learned the identities of the competing wines, it turned out to be the Bernardus 2015 Carmel Valley Marinus Estate Red, not yet formally released, though expected to be priced around $75 when it is.
Carmel Valley is a small and rugged American Viticultural Area just east of Monterey, Pebble Beach and Carmel-by-the-Sea. Only about 300 acres are planted to wine grapes in the enclave. Since the region began to draw attention for its wines in the 1980s, it has built its reputation largely with densely colored, substantially built and enduring takes on Cabernet Sauvignon.
“Marinus” is the name of the 32-acre vineyard where grapes for the Bernardus blend are grown. It is a few miles from the Tassajara Fire that burned about 1200 acres in September 2015 while grapes still were maturing in the region.
At the time, Bernardus winemaker Dean DeKorth didn’t figure that smoke from the fire had an effect on the fruit, given that the fire was short lived, and, by California standards, small. He proceeded to ferment juice from the grapes with his usual protocol. That approach, he now feels, helped retain the wine’s typical fruit while lightening any suggestion of unwanted smoke in the wine.
“One thing that I do differently than many of my colleagues is that I ferment our Marinus grapes at a cooler temperature than do many winemakers – about 75 degrees Fahrenheit. That is because we normally get loads of color and tannins from our vineyard. Cooler temperatures preserve more fruity esters and extract less phenolic compounds, providing us with a more fruity, balanced flavor expression. That may have helped us in 2015,” said DeKorth in an exchange of messages.
The folks at Bernardus subsequently sent me a bottle of the 2015 Marinus, as well as bottles of Marinus from the vintages 2013 and 2014. I tasted them side by side. All three are exceptionally classy takes on Cabernet Sauvignon – balanced, supple, glorious in their commanding representation of the variety.
The 2013 was the most accessible and the most elegant, given its additional time in bottle. It was all of a piece, juicy with suggestions of cranberries, cherries and olives. Its tannins were relaxed, its oak well integrated, its acidity uplifting.
The 2014 was no less juicy, and no less suggestive of cherries, but the structure was stiffer, and it showed threads of chaparral, leather, concrete and menthol not so apparent in the other vintages.
The 2015 stood apart in four respects. It was just as juicy as the others but a bit more tightly woven, given its youth. Its alcohol was lower – 13.4 percent compared with 14.3 for the 2014 and 14.1 for the 2013. Its acidity was more finely honed. And there was that faint trace of smoke from wildland fire circulating through its fruit. It was barely perceptible, adding an enticing element to the wine’s complexity. It put me in mind of two things. One was the fond memory of smoke spiraling from the fine hot tip of my childhood wood-burning kit as I etched horse, bird, dog or something else on a thin plank of balsa. The other was the captivating smell of one of my favorite teas, lapsang souchong, a black tea whose leaves traditionally are smoked over a pine-wood fire, though the suggestion of smoke in the wine was much milder than it customarily is with a cup of the tea.
The impact of wildfire smoke and ash on wine grapes and the wines they yield has come to generally be called “smoke taint,” much to the consternation of winemakers and growers who feel that the term is pejorative. They have a point, though scientists, consumers and wine writers continue to favor “smoke taint” over less negative alternatives that vintners would like to see adopted, such as “smoke influenced” or “smoke impacted.”
Whatever it is called, the influence of smoke from wildland fires almost annually over the past decade has been of major concern in the wine trade, prompting all sorts of research that has yet to yield consensus on several considerations: Do different varieties of grape absorb smoke differently? Are grapes more or less susceptible to longtime effects from smoke according to their stage of development? Will this or that mitigation measure strip wine of traces of unwanted smoke without affecting more positive attributes? Can grapes be sprayed with something to impede the impact of smoke from a wildland fire?
Currently, winemakers in the central Sierra Nevada foothills east of Sacramento are evaluating batches of red wine they salvaged in 2021, the year of the Caldor Fire, trying to determine if their efforts to clean up the wines without leaving them aesthetically anemic have worked. They already had abandoned and left hanging tons of grapes that they sensed early on couldn’t produce wines up to their usual standards.
Some foothill vintners are concluding that some lots of finished wine they treated with this or that technique in hopes of securing unblemished releases are just fine. Some are finding that some lots weren’t scrubbed of as much smoke as they would like. They now are pondering whether to blend such affected batches with undamaged lots and thereby dissipate traces of the smoke. Others are thinking that their only recourse may be to distill smoke-influenced wine, setting aside the spirits to fortify dessert wines. Some also are pondering whether to release smoke-influenced wines under a novelty label, frankly acknowledging that 2021 was an exceptional vintage in a very unusual way.
Some wines with light suggestions of wildland smoke likely will be released, with winemakers hoping that consumers aren’t put off and possibly even captivated positively by the added stitch of complexity.
That could be what happened with judges in Cloverdale and Houston, the faint smoke providing another layer to consider and savor. Think lapsang souchong, or, for that matter, any number of foods and beverages that capitalize on smoke and for which Americans have an avid appetite – bacon, salmon, cheese, whiskey, beer and no end of barbecue sauces. None smell of “ashtray,” a descriptor commonly applied to wines that have been affected extremely by smoke from a wildland fire.
Not only can suggestions of smoke in a wine stretch across a wide spectrum, from sweet pipe tobacco to, yes, dirty ashtray, people’s ability to pick up essence of smoke in a wine can be just as variable.
“Smokiness” in wine isn’t a flaw; just witness the efforts that vintners make to buy oak barrels that have been treated to assure that they will imbue a wine with suggestions of smoke. The eyes of some winemakers light up when a vendor selling oak barrels or wood chips mentions they have just the product that will enhance their Chardonnay or Cabernet Sauvignon with suggestions of toasted marshmallow, roasted nuts, butterscotch and the like, none of which is related to the fruit that wine at its purest is intended to project.
Might not it be better to look upon the insinuation of smoke from a wildland fire in a wine not only as a finely nuanced and provocative diversion but in line with the historic principle that wine be a transparent and honest representative of place and time? If the growing year included smoke from a wildland fire, why not say that, alerting consumers that the Zinfandel or Pinot Noir or whatever is in the bottle well may strike them as different from wines produced during vintages not as exceptional?
Toward that goal, consider my smoke-taint wine scale, though if a winery were to adopt it I suggest they recast it as the “smoke-enhanced” scale or the “smoke-charmed” scale, or something similarly more upbeat and market conscious.
This scale was inspired by the International Riesling Foundation, which several years ago came up with a graphic solution for an issue the group felt was hampering perception and sales of the varietal: As consumers browsed the Riesling section in supermarket or wine shop they didn’t know whether this or that wine was dry, sweet or something in between. The scale they came up with, which since then has been added to the back label of many Rieslings, is graduated from “dry” to “sweet,” with “medium dry” and “medium sweet” between the two extremes. A pointer somewhere along the scale alerts browsing wine enthusiasts to whether the wine is more or less dry, or sweet.
The intent of this smoke-taint scale is in the same spirit – to give consumers some notion that this or that wine has been affected by smoke from a wildland fire, which looks as if it could remain a yearly challenge for winemakers. Such smoke, however, need not be deleterious to the pleasure a wine can deliver, as established by the high awards given the Lewis Grace and Bernardus releases. Wildland-fire smoke actually could heighten a wine’s complexity, provocation and enjoyment, especially if it is a wine that carries just a sweet hint of cigarette or pipe tobacco. And, who knows, a segment of the market just may like to savor a wine that smells and tastes of cigar, rubbish fire, dirty ashtray or something equally as bizarre. Just look at the weirdly flavored beers that have developed followings.