SMOKE AFFECTED BRANDY WRITTEN BY ANDY GARRISON
I
am writing this in the midst of a downpour, which hopefully marks the end of fire season for most of the West Coast. The fires might be over for now, but the damage they cause lingers as evidenced by the shipment of smoke-affected wine from the 2020 harvest which we received at the distillery last week. The impact of wildfire smoke on wine is highly variable. This makes the topic challenging for wineries, as they need to rapidly make decisions with big financial impact using shaky data and gut hunches. The swirling mixture of variables that seem to affect the degree of smoke damage includes proximity, grape variety, the plant source of smoke, the stage of growth of the vine, prevailing winds, and site orientation – and those are just the factors that take place before the winemaking begins. The science for predicting and detecting smoke impact is developing rapidly, with many research projects now underway, but there will continue to be much uncertainty. All of that suggests that, unfortunately, when there are fire events in winegrowing regions, some grapes will get turned into wine that will not be usable for the winery. For me, as head distiller of a West Coast brandy-focused
W W W . ARTISANSPIRITMAG . C O M
The science for predicting and detecting smoke impact is developing rapidly, with many research projects now underway, but there will continue to be much uncertainty.
distillery, the last 14 months have included a steady drip of phone calls from distressed and then depressed winemakers trying to figure out what to do with smoke-affected wines. After working through thousands of gallons of different wines I thought I would try to sum up what I’ve learned.
SETTING EXPECTATIONS The first important conversation is about expectations and usage. Smoke damage is a relatively new experience for many winemakers in my region, and it has pushed some into looking at distillation for the first time. I had several conversations that started with a desire to take smoke-damaged red wine and “make high-end Cognac-style brandy” that would match the premium status of the winery and the expense of the grapes used.
Unfortunately, some winemakers have the misconception that brandy is made from “bad” wine, with “bad” meaning regular wine that is faulty or flawed in some fashion. In actuality, brandy is ideally produced from unflawed wine that is merely too acidic and low alcohol to find favor as table wine. For some distillers, their only experience making wine brandy has been from faulted or surplus wine, which might contribute to this misconception about how brandy is produced and what it should taste like. The world standards for brandy, Cognac and Armagnac, are distilled from high-acidity, low-alcohol white wines with little to no added sulfur dioxide, not screwed up scraps from the winery cellar. From a starting point of 13 percent or higher ABV red wine (smoky or not) that has been treated with sulfur dioxide, it may be possible to create something unique, tasty, or well-suited for a 51