Tag Archives: smoke taint

Winebits 759: Local Wine Events, glass bottles, smoke taint

Woman reading a computer tablet
“Let me see — where is the Local Wine Events site for my city?”

This week’s wine news: Local Wine Events celebrates its 22nd birthday, plus glass bottle recycling and progress on smoke taint

• Happy birthday: In 2000, Eric Orange was looking for wine events in Denver. Twenty-two years later this month, Local Wine Events has some 300,000 subscribers and posts wine, beer, and spirits events in 63 countries. Which, frankly, may be one of the best things to happen to wine this century. Eric is a long-time pal of the blog and offered some much appreciated support during our Drink Local Wine days. That her has made it this long speaks to the service he provides – and that the site has been to leverage the Internet to make money.

• Glass recycling: Refresh Glass wants to recycle 10 million glass wine bottles – and it’s apparently off to a good start. The company, founded by Ray DelMuro, has turned more than 1.6 million bottles into drinking glasses, carafes, planters, votive holders, and more. DelMuro says glass recyclers must find a way to increase the amount that is used again – only about one-third of glass bottles are recycled – and so works with with local restaurants to collect their empty bottles. Says DelMuro: “People are sick and tired of being greenwashed into thinking something’s been recycled when it’s not.”

• Smoke taint research: Oregon State researchers may have found the compounds that contribute to smoke taint in wine and grapes. Previously, compounds known as volatile phenols seemed to indicate smoke taint. But some wines with high levels often didn’t taste of smoke taint while wines with low levels did. So Elizabeth Tomasino, an associate professor of enology, and her colleagues looked for other compounds, and may have found one in a new class of sulfur-containing compounds called thiophenols. It seemed to cause smoke taint when combined with volatile phenols. This, of course, is a major discovery if it’s true given the rash of wildfires and the possibility of smoke taint in the last couple of years on the west coast.

Winebits 562: Smoke taint, wine advice, non-alcoholic booze

smoke taint
I’m just not going to worry about smoke taint, no matter how much I read about it.

This week’s wine news: The cyber-ether is awash in smoke taint controversy, while we get more not very good wine advice from the Mainstream Media and non-alcoholic booze gets more popular

• Fire damage? Wildfires in California and the Pacific Northwest the past two summers may have damaged grapes with something called smoke taint — or they may not have. And, even if the fires caused smoke taint, it may not affect most of the wine sold in the U.S. Ain’t writing about the wine industry grand? Smoke taint, say researchers, is caused by smoke from fires, leaving the wine with unpleasant “ashtray” smells and flavors. But no one is quite sure how to detect it or even if it can be detected before the grapes are crushed. Confused? Growers, especially after last summer’s fires, swore smoke taint wouldn’t be a problem. But some producers insist they’re wrong. More perplexing? The fantastic amount of coverage in print and the Internet, given that the grapes under scrutiny are used to make wine costing at least $20, which most of us don’t drink. But that’s how the Winestream Media rolls.

• Stop me before I advise again: The Wine Curmudgeon keeps a weather eye out for wine advice in the mainstream media, where good intentions too often lead to bad advice. Witness this post from Lifehacker, which makes no sense at all and seems mostly to be a plug for the retailer doing the recommending. Please, editors: Make sure your reporters know the basics of wine before you let them write about it. You wouldn’t let them write that way about brain surgery, would you?

• No more buzz: Will the non-alcoholic wine and beer market be worth will $25 billion by 2024? That’s the estimate from the Global Markets Insight consultancy. It cites several reasons: Improved brewing and fermenting techniques, which give the products the same taste and feel as those with alcohol, as well as increasing health concerns about booze from younger consumers. By comparison, wine sales in the U.S. total about $36 billion a year.