Today, some buyers are rejecting 2020 bottles without even tasting them. I need to address this swiftly and intentionally, because it’s in many ways disloyal to our domestic industry. We all know that 2020 was a challenging year for many reasons. Our Pirate Princess on the label bears a mask to reflect the reality in of the pandemic. And I’m no stranger to wildfires. This is my fifth vintage dealing with smoke. And while 2020 presented some unprecedented circumstances in air quality and smoke coverage throughout the state, the vineyards in Southern Oregon were miraculously spared compared to other regions on the west coast. I feel relieved and confident in the wine I produced. My 2013, 2017 and 2018 Cabernet Francs detected as much smoke impact as 2020, and those wines have been celebrated with exceptional 90+ scores and “Best Buy” reviews.
Over the years, I have surrounded myself with competent professionals from CA and in research. I served on a panel of wine makers assisting on a research project on smoke taint for OSU, and I have learned best practices from a precautionary stand point because, from what I have learned, you cannot take on preventive measures. Smoke is either going to show up or it’s not - you can’t prevent it. There are tools available to significantly reduce the perception of smoke in your wine. And, it really helps to work with fruit that does not shrink from a little bit of smokiness - but rather already carries complex aromatic and flavor compounds that actually compliment a hint of smoke. There is a real range and threshold of smokiness that can show up in wine and not all of it is like an ash tray in your mouth! There are variables like fire fuel source, location of fire to vineyard, and the consistency of the smoke itself - is the smoke thick and hovering just over the vines or is it more like a slight gray cloudiness high up in the sky? All that said, we came out on the lucky side of the fire spectrum, with all of these variables considered.