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40 WINES&VINES April 2016 GROUNDED GRAPEGROWING found in toasted barrels, the levels will increase if the wine is treated with toasted oak as part of the winemaking protocol. Reverse osmosis and carbon filtration will help to remove smoke flavors from fermented wine but may require multiple cycles since the wine can continue to release smoke-related phenolic compounds by hydrolysis. At some point, the wine begins to lose other phenolic compounds that are important to taste, color and mouthfeel, and quality is downgraded. It is also somewhat expensive to make multiple filtration passes, which may be required de- pending on the severity of smoke flavors. Flash Détente is another technique that has been tested for improving wine affected by smoke, but it has not proven very effective, removing around 10% of phenolic compounds associated with smoke flavors. Winemakers who have dealt extensively with this problem agree that you need to test fruit before it comes into the winery if you suspect that it is smoke affected. Next, do your treatments early and retest the wine a month or so later to be sure that you are removing the problem. It may take multiple treatments months apart to clean up the wine. Some winemakers decide to send the wine to the bulk wine market rather than deal with treatment, which can be expensive and unsat- isfactory in the end. The human factor Not everyone tastes smoke-affected wine the same way. It is a certainty that winemakers become very sensitive to the aroma and react negatively to even small amounts. Other people cannot perceive it in small amounts, while still others actually like the aroma in limited amounts. Wineries have made many market decisions from selling the wine off in bulk to creating second labels for wines that have been extensively treated to remove off fla- vors, to simply accepting the smoke flavors as typical of the vintage—and, in a strange way, part of nature's expression for the growing year (this is a minority view in most cases)! Planning ahead Smoke from forest and brushfires is yet another challenging hurdle that winegrowers must face as we experience dry years. As part of risk manage- ment, preparing your vineyard and the area around it to be "fire safe" is a good idea. The larger risk of smoke from distant fires settling over your vineyard can be managed with crop insurance to cover losses. White wine varieties can be cleaned up surprisingly well and probably will be sold in the marketplace before any consumers (or wine writers) are aware that it was a smoky year. Red wines affected with smoke can be quite problem- atic, but they can be fixed if the rates of guaiacol and 4-methylguaiacol are not too high. This is yet another challenge to making quality wine when nature hands you an unanticipated problem. Glenn McGourty is the University of California Coopera- tive Extension winegrowing and plant science advisor for Lake and Mendocino counties. He tends a 1-acre vine- yard of the aromatic Italian wine grape variety Arneis on his property along the Russian River near Ukiah, Calif. Bob Blue of Fetzer Vineyards, Bob Swain of Mendocino Wine Co. and Eric Herve of ETS Laboratories helped provide information for this article. Mowing close to the vineyard floor offers wildfires less material to use as fuel.