Wildfires are changing the taste of wine. Surprised?
Over the past decade, as fires have become more intense and frequent, this has become a major headache for growers and winemakers.
Yes, wildfires damage trees, ecosystems, wildlife and Indigenous communities but don’t assume people far from the flames are safe from the fallout. Smoke and ash travel, and ash can settle on grape skins, altering the wine’s overall flavor.
In this article we’ll dig into the issue in detail and outline ways to reduce the effect. If you want to learn more about this problem, keep reading.
Ash from wildfire smoke, the thing every grower is thinking about!
The first serious study of this problem came after the big Canberra fires in Australia in 2003. Australia’s wine research institute set out to find whether ash and smoke actually change the taste of wine and if so, how far-reaching that impact is.
The results were clearer than anyone expected: smoke-derived ash can affect wine far more than we’d imagined. Fortunately, it’s not an unsolvable problem but first we need to understand how it works.
What smoke does to wine?
Smoke in the air deposits compounds, notably guaiacol and 4-methylguaiacol onto grapes and into the must, and those compounds give the wine a distinct smoky character. For many people that character is unpleasant.
You might recognise a similar smoky note in wines aged in oak barrels; in that case the smoky element is at a very different level and is usually seen as a pleasant, desirable flavor. The difference is control: many winemakers rely on oak to give a measured, controlled smokiness. Wildfire smoke is nothing like that, it arrives in large, uncontrolled quantities and can coat grapes unevenly, pushing flavors into an off, bitter, overpowering smoke rather than a balanced, toasty note.
Who suffers most? white or red?
Smoke flavors tend to show up more noticeably in white wines, where they can more easily disrupt delicate aromas and the wine’s balance.
So is that “bad taste” in some Canadian wines caused by recent wildfires?
That’s the big question, and the short answer is: it depends. To know for sure you have to consider several factors, how close the winery or vineyard was to the fires, how intense the fires and the smoke were, and at what stage of grape development the smoke exposure happened. For example, smoke that settles on grapes close to harvest tends to have a deeper, more lasting impact.
Can Wildfire Smoke Ruin All Wine?
All the factors we mentioned earlier help determine whether wildfire smoke actually ruins a vintage. But here’s the key point: even if vineyards are exposed to smoke, it doesn’t mean the end of winemaking.
In Australia, winemakers and researchers have developed several strategies to minimize smoke taint, including:
- Hand harvesting grapes to reduce skin breakage and limit smoke penetration.
- Leaf thinning so that fewer smoky compounds settle on foliage and affect the grapes.
- Protecting fruit integrity by avoiding unnecessary handling and water exposure.
- Keeping grapes cool to slow down the extraction of smoke-related compounds.
Of course, these steps deal with the problem after smoke exposure. Prevention is always better and that means stopping fires early.
At Sensenet, we’ve developed a system that combines AI-analyzed images, satellite data, forest cameras, and gas sensors to detect wildfires in their earliest stages. This allows alerts to reach authorities faster than any human report, stopping fires before they spread — and preventing side effects like the smoke taint now troubling Canadian wines.
Final Thoughts
The recent Canadian wildfires don’t mean you’ll never find good wine from the region again. Vineyard owners and the wine industry are working hard to reduce the impact. But without intelligent early-detection systems for wildfire prevention, the challenge may not disappear anytime soon.