With California in the midst of harvest, many grape growers are wrestling with contracts -- trying to determine who will be honoring grape contracts this season and in what capacity.  The Hennessey and Walbridge fires, both part of the larger LNU Lightning Complex, will most likely create far reaching monetary effects on premier fruit -- with many small growers ill-prepared to shoulder the financial burden.

What this means for many wine producers is that they will be facing critical choices for this harvest: (a)  moving forward and producing potentially smoke-tainted wine (and utilizing more oak in programs to mask smoke-like aromas), (b) blending this wine into larger programs and lessening its profile, (c) bulking it out, or (d) foregoing this year’s harvest completely.  There seems to be no easy choice but nonetheless, choices will need to be made -- imminently.

In previous years, wine producers have been creative with this potential pitfall, categorizing smoke taint as part of a natural occurrence – one that simply reflects that vintage’s conditions and adds an extra nuance among the multitude of flavor components.  As smoke taint has become a less desirable characteristic to most consumers, however, this option is proving to be more difficult, if not impossible.

Fortunately, Winetech has been providing the alcohol beverage industry with filtration solutions for over 20 years and we are tightly connected with wine producers in California, Oregon, and Washington.  We have seen and addressed a myriad of issues with wine production and have been closely involved in the development of winemaking (both in-house and in assisting others) in custom development.  Simply put, Winetech understands the difficult decisions involved when it comes to reparations to juice and finished wine and offers winemakers and winegrowers real-time solutions.

Winetech’s Smoke Taint Removal System uses loose RO to separate 4MG/G into the permeate stream. This permeate stream is then treated separately through ion-exchange resin columns, removing smoke taint without damaging pigmented retentate, which is responsible for wine’s complex characteristics. After treatment, the permeate is blended back into the retentate.

For more information on Winetech’s smoke taint removal process, as well as our other services such as VA adjustment, ethyl acetate removal, and more, please email filtration@winetech.us or call us directly at 707.257.2080.  We are here to support our partners in the industry.

smoke taint filtration