Per ETS, 4-methylguaiacol above 2ug/L indicates smoke taint only in unoaked wines. I got 4.4ug/L 4-MG on the blend of prior vintages which they say is pretty standard for a 25% new oak wine. My 2020 PN was 2.4ug/L 4-MG, so I’m fairly comfortable there. The ETS smoke expert says you can go much higher on both guaiacol and 4-MG with more heavily oaked wines without wildfire smoke being the culprit. In any case, once you’ve been in barrel for a while, reading the lab results gets more nebulous, but it seems pretty clear that the unoaked bucket ferments guidelines are no longer the right benchmark.
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These are great points, and thank you for sharing your story. I completely agree: knowing the 4G/4MG numbers for previous vintages of your oaked wines is super helpful for understanding any results of new finished or unfinished wines.
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My valley floor Calistoga (EMH) came back from ETS with 3.1 guaiacol and 1.0 4-meth. They said I was good to go, particularly since the reading came from wine in barrel (all at least once-used). Have since put on a couple of new barrels and, for me, it is business as usual.
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Casey is this a personal project? If so why not 3-4 gallons clear dealc and reinnoculate. Otherwise you’r going towind up with an elevated VA and a sweet wine.
Rick, this is my single personal barrel that I make withy foreman. I thought about a restart, but got busy with other things. Gonna wait til things warm up and wait to see if primary kicks in again when malo fires up. I know there’s a high likelihood that it’s going to become salad dressing, but I already have too much wine to drink anyway.
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Thought from your post that was the case. If I can provide any help let me know I’m likely to be in AV a couple of times this spring.
I’ve trialed a few products so far on smoke taint remediation. AntiBrett from AEB, which I’ve used in the past is very efficient on low level wines that show just a touch of smoke. For wines that are severely affected I’m still working on it - but I’ve noticed so far that bentonite will help clean up the mouthfeel on a smoke tainted wine. I’m also working on an activated carbon / chitosan / vegetable protein trial. I’ve seen incredible results with that, and paired with an acid addition actually brings out the fruit in the wine. I’m working with some pretty heavily affected wine, so if I can clean this lot up I’m pretty confident going forward of knowing how to attack it in the future.
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Jeff Murrell at VinSci has an “SRX” resin column that removes the bitter components in smoke tainted wine, but not the guaiacol. VA filtration and Mavrik filtration works well to remove guaiacol.
I’m working with Jeff about his resin filter. I’ve had VA Filtration tech’s speak glowingly about their in-house membrane filter for smoke taint, but I wasn’t a fan of what we got back from other membrane filtration services and their smoke taint treatment.
I’m looking at working with Jeff once I get this wine workable - which I feel is just right around the corner.
Fun story: 2020 wines, all grown together in Lake County which didn’t have fires in 2020. Free guaiacol: 7ppb Dolcetto, 10 ppb Petite Sirah, 18ppb Mourvèdre. Bulked out some but ended bottling a bit to sell as shiners. Just did group taste for the first time after bottling. Mourvèdre had no detectable smoke, just a slight “black fruit” bump (it was bad smoke year one), Petite had a hair, the Dolcetto at only 7 (which had a questionable micro ferment test) is terribly smoked. After a couple years of this I didn’t worry if the number was under 8, now I am reconsidering… This isn’t the dry ashtray, but more like an old coffee, and no press wine was used. Numbers are helpful, but just numbers, and the science is still out, but I see cultivar being the big variable at this point.
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Pietro, we are around the corner from you. Our chard was rejected for<2 ppb free guaiacol. I couldnt taste it. Our sauv blanc was accepted and I could detect a bitterness on the back end. I think I still have a few of those samples which might be interesting to revisit.
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That would be neat to check out. I understand the 2 ppl cutoff, but it really does seem to depend on the grape. Especially with whites?? If you are direct pressing that shouldn’t really be an issue at all. I think there is a lot of panic though, which is understandable.
Search for newer threads in WINE TALK for links to newer information. There are many compounds that can comprise smoke taint. Testing only for guaiacol is like testing for a loose correlation. Since it exists naturally in some grape varieties, you get a certain level from barrels, and depending on the wine up to a certain level won’t be noticed and up to some higher level may not be a negative. When you are testing for it, you want the level from previous vintages to have a benchmark so you don’t panic over normal.
Haven’t watched this yet. 2 hours, 41 minutes. WCSETF Annual Smoke Summit
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