From Seattle station KING 5:
Wildfire 'smoke taint' compromises Woodinville winery's 2020 vintage
Wine that tastes like an ashtray -- that's what happened to a Woodinville winery's latest vintage, due to last year's wildfires in Washington, Oregon and California.
Betz Family Winery announced Tuesday it will not release wine from its 2020 vintage due to "smoke taint," which impacted their grapes used for wine.
Betz Family has a tasting room and winery in Woodinville but their vineyards are located in drier eastern Washington, along the Columbia River valley, Walla Walla and Yakima Valley.
Wildfires from September and October last year impacted their grapes in varying degrees. "You can just smell the smoke literally on the bunches," said Bridgit Griessel of Betz Family Winery.
Changes to the flavor profile of the wine became apparent during the fermentation process and lab tests confirmed the smoke taint, Griessel said.
Yikes - they knew about it going in but fermentation completely rewrites the flavor profile so maybe they were hoping to get lucky. A bit more from the story:
Hundreds of barrels of red wine from the 2020 vintage will not be bottled and potentially be kept for an indefinite amount of time to further study the impacts of smoke taint, according to Betz Family Winery.
That is going to suck big-time too - the barrels are $400 each or thereabouts (wide range in price/quality) and once the taint gets into the wood, it will color anything else put into it.
Who knows, the wine might clear up after a few years. They could always sell it to a blender (hello? Mogen-David?) or a rectifier and have them distil it down to pure ethanol but that would be a huge loss of revenue.
Their website is here: Betz Family Wine and we can see that their "entry-level red wine" sells for $35/bottle. Other offerings are in the $50-on-up range. This is a big loss of revenue for them.
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