Winebits 759: Local Wine Events, glass bottles, smoke taint
by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On
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.