Heat Damaged Wine In California?

[Blake_Brown]

Another concern is the smoke damage to vineyards not yet picked. I believe most had already been picked prior to the fires, but have heard of a few that picked late for various reasons.

Im still dealing with smoke taint from my friend Burt Williams Morning Dew Ranch [Anderson Valley] Pinots from 2008.

[Larry_P]

A couple weeks extra hang time and a little forest floor grillé sounds like a recipe for 97 points to me.

[George_Chadwick]

I think a few years from now I’ll be more likely to buy a Napa or Sonoma wine from 2017 than from any other vintage.

[Merrill_Lindquist]

@M. Sai

Data point from Sonoma, town of: the high that week according to my Netatmo weather station on my back porch was 80.6F - but that was the first Monday, just after power was lost in most places. The rest of the week averaged highs in the low 70’s, and lows at night in the mid-40’s to high-30’s. Most of the week was overcast - either via clouds, smoke or some combination thereof. I was lucky enough to have power and I was running our furnace in the morning to warm the house up.

My buddy who is on the production side said temperature in their cellar only rose two degrees, despite not having power for several days.

I’m on the secondary market side of the business so we will obviously be extremely careful with any local collections moving forward, but heat damage due to loss of power would be the exception, not the rule. Especially if the wine was stored in an off-site facility - which typically has a massive amount of temperature inertia from concrete, racks and the bottles themselves.

Excellent points, Mike. My own home only lost power for 2 hours, and that was well before mandatory evacuation. I couldn’t go home, but the electricity was running! I received a very low Pacific Gas and Electric bill yesterday. I did notice it said there was an auxiliary power charge - I assume our main system went out but it was augmented by another source. I am not sure.

[Randy_Bowman]

I’m not sure how is other areas but most dedicated wines shops in Napa and Sonoma store their wines in temperature controlled cellars and display their wines in rooms at 70 degrees or less. The grocery stores around the US may store their wine at a cool temperature but display the wines standing up at temps between 70 and 80 degrees. UPS and FedEx do not have any temperature control in their trucks, van, rail cars nor their distribution facilities.

I seriously doubt there will be any heat damaged wines sold by reputable wineries or retailers and I doubt there is any heat damaged wine with corks and labels in place.

[Merrill_Lindquist]

@Randy Bowman

I’m not sure how is other areas but most dedicated wines shops in Napa and Sonoma store their wines in temperature controlled cellars and display their wines in rooms at 70 degrees or less. The grocery stores around the US may store their wine at a cool temperature but display the wines standing up at temps between 70 and 80 degrees. UPS and FedEx do not have any temperature control in their trucks, van, rail cars nor their distribution facilities.

I seriously doubt there will be any heat damaged wines sold by reputable wineries or retailers and I doubt there is any heat damaged wine with corks and labels in place.

Agreed. Those of us ITB know we are not in this for one quarter, or one release, or one sale. It is the repeat business, based on good products and continued integrity, that we are looking for. Not much different from any other business I have been in. I was frequently troubled when I worked in the tech industry when we would put prototypes in the hands of our customers, knowing they had a high probability of bugs. The customers knew that, too, but I always wanted to place a more finely tuned product. Just me.

[Chris_Seiber]

@Merrill Lindquist

@Randy Bowman

I’m not sure how is other areas but most dedicated wines shops in Napa and Sonoma store their wines in temperature controlled cellars and display their wines in rooms at 70 degrees or less. The grocery stores around the US may store their wine at a cool temperature but display the wines standing up at temps between 70 and 80 degrees. UPS and FedEx do not have any temperature control in their trucks, van, rail cars nor their distribution facilities.

I seriously doubt there will be any heat damaged wines sold by reputable wineries or retailers and I doubt there is any heat damaged wine with corks and labels in place.

Agreed. Those of us ITB know we are not in this for one quarter, or one release, or one sale. It is the repeat business, based on good products and continued integrity, that we are looking for. Not much different from any other business I have been in. I was frequently troubled when I worked in the tech industry when we would put prototypes in the hands of our customers, knowing they had a high probability of bugs. The customers knew that, too, but I always wanted to place a more finely tuned product. Just me.

Wait, you use screw caps for EMH? I didn’t know that.

[Wes_Barton]

@Alan Rath

Couple of answers: Very few wine shops or wine storage facilities were affected by power outages for very long. And while there were a few days of higher temps (80s), low temperatures were in the 30s and 40s almost every day, with less daylight than night hours now that it’s fall. Any decent building would have stayed relatively cool, even without AC running. I don’t think this is something to worry about. We’ve had a few days in the mid 80s in recent weeks, but even in my poorly insulated house, without AC, the inside temperature has barely made 70, and we don’t get as cold at night as Napa or Santa Rosa does.

Exactly. AC can only do so much. So, in an indecent building during a heat wave, the AC wouldn’t be able to keep up. A decent building suitable for wine storage should have no issue with mid-80s temps. If there’s any damaged wine because of this, it’s an anomaly that is statistically insignificant to the normal risks.

[Wes_Barton]

@Greg D

@Alan Rath

Just trying to tamp down the fear and sense that seems to be out there that the whole Napa/Sonoma area has been wiped off the map. …

Yeah, reminds me of the '89 earthquake when all my out of family/relatives from the eastern half of the country thought the whole Bay Area was devastated because all the news kept showing was the Marina District in SF and the Cypress Structure (880) in Oakland.

I was at work in Palo Alto with the World Series radio broadcast tuned in. They were saying the Bay Bridge collapsed, among other things.

[Randy_Bowman]

After the 2014 earthquake in Napa, we went three days without power. Temperatures weren’t really that high. We considered generators and dry ice while we watched the thermometers with our flashlights. The wine room never got above 68 and the storeroom inched up to 64 degrees because we were in and out so much cleaning up the damage. Higher temperatures and/or longer time without power may have brought a generator into play, but it takes 7 days for approval by the city, plus inspection and sign off.

[Pat_Martin]

I know at least one prominent, high end Napa-based wine retailer had to shut down for a weekend due to fire danger (they said so on their homepage). Doesn’t mean that power went out or that their storage warehouse was as close to the fire as the main office, but it did make me wonder about the storage conditions for all of our wine awaiting shipping temps (including the risk of incineration which thankfully didn’t happen).

This thread is reassuring that the weather, etc. wasn’t likely to be a big deal even if they lost power for a spell.

[andy_velebil]

As I like to remind people from time to time. Refrigerated wine shipping world wide is a relatively young endeavor. So all those wines shipped abroad many years ago that people open and drink today, and rave about how good they are, all shipped in what today we would consider way too warm of temps and without any cooling along the way. And they all turned out just fine. Just something to think about.

Unless the wine was in the fire and the fire caused significant heating (which would probably be very obvious) you generally have nothing to worry about.

[Merrill_Lindquist]

@andy velebil

As I like to remind people from time to time. Refrigerated wine shipping world wide is a relatively young endeavor. So all those wines shipped abroad many years ago that people open and drink today, and rave about how good they are, all shipped in what today we would consider way too warm of temps and without any cooling along the way. And they all turned out just fine. Just something to think about.

Unless the wine was in the fire and the fire caused significant heating (which would probably be very obvious) you generally have nothing to worry about.

Well-stated. I agree.

[Bob_Busch]

@Brian Tuite

IMO, the only wines affected by the power outages were the ones where the home cellar or winery burned to the ground or the wineries that bailed for a few days when the power went out and lost ferments that went too hot due to loss of glycol cooling in the tanks.

Weather was tame with evenings in the low 30s as Alan mentioned

Brian’s point regarding wineries that had to bail for several days and lost power is a question I had. I really have not heard anything from wineries regarding this. If you lose ferment, I assume you are dead in the water? I am just curious about the fact that wineries had to walk away from their wines in tank and could this be an issue on quality.

[GregT]

@Brian Tuite

IMO, the only wines affected by the power outages were the ones where the home cellar or winery burned to the ground or the wineries that bailed for a few days when the power went out and lost ferments that went too hot due to loss of glycol cooling in the tanks.

Weather was tame with evenings in the low 30s as Alan mentioned

Well, if the cellar burned to the ground, there may be some heat damage. Although if the labels were burned off the bottles, you might not know - you may be thinking you’re drinking Sea Smoke when you’re really drinking something else.

But there were and are fires around the world. Spain and Portugal for example. Greece too. Wine is usually made in dry areas. So although the fires in Sonoma and Napa were severe, they’re not singular events that have never happened anywhere. As Brian said, if your facility wasn’t damaged, you may not have much heat damage.

[Al_Osterheld]

For wineries with grapes in fermenters, the impact is pretty specific to the winery/lot. How long was power out, how long was access not possible (some folks were sneaking in to do punch downs or pump overs), how big were the fermenters. Will some lots be affected? No doubt. But, things happen to some lots for a variety of reasons every harvest, and the winemakers make decisions about how to address and, ultimately, whether how to use those particular lots. I don’t think there are any general lessons to be drawn about wineries in specific areas. I mostly buy from producers I trust to try to put out a quality product and maintain their good reputations.

-Al

[Michael_S_Monie]

If I’m not mistaken, Monfortino is made without temperature control during fermentation. So I guess higher temperatures are not necessarily a bad thing.

[Al_Osterheld]

A lot of smaller California producers make reds (and even whites) without temperature control. Depending on the size of the fermenter (surface to volume), the type of fermenter (eg, concrete), and the temperature of the winery, there really aren’t any issues with the temperatures getting too high. The yeast and probably the variety also make a difference.

-Al