Afternoon Brief, September 13th

Wildfire Smoke Ruins Taste of Some Wines: Grapes exposed to smoke absorb chemicals that can alter — and sometimes ruin — the taste and smell of resultant wines. This “smoke taint” has become a growing concern for the industry...

This year’s harvest gave the winemaking team at Rack & Riddle Custom Wine Services in Healdsburg a chance to test some new machinery that allowed them to press and crush the grapes in the vineyard, something only done in a few European wine regions. The goal of the project is to get the freshest possible juice into the tanks in the least amount of time, cutting down on problems ranging from highway traffic to long wait times at the winery before the fruit can finally be processed. The roughly 25 tons of chardonnay grapes harvested from the Thomson Vineyards on Sept. 3 will serve as the base to be fermented into sparkling wine and also help determine whether this could be a viable new technique in American winemaking. Read the article here:https://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/business/grapes-crushed-right-in-the-vineyard-sonoma-county-winery-tries-something/ BILL SWINDELL THE PRESS DEMOCRAT An overhead shot of the Rack & Riddle winemaking team conducting a grape crush fo