Fire crews do mop up operate in Division Echo of the Bootleg Fire in their efforts to combat the blaze on July 25, 2021 in the Fremont-Winema National Park of Oregon. – the “Bootleg Fire” in Oregon, which started on July 6, 2021 near Beatty, Oregon, has burned in the space of 2 weeks the equivalent of the city of Los Angeles in vegetation and forests. (Picture by Mathieu Lewis-Rolland/ AFP) (Picture by MATHIEU LEWIS-ROLLAND/AFP by means of Getty Images)
An Oregon researcher is looking for out how to save white wine harvests, from wildfires.
The chemistry of white wine: has the tastes we take pleasure in. “Red fruit. They’re tasting banana or green apple or honey or grassy or bell pepper.”
But wildfires can create those we do not like. “The very first one being ash. This is simply type of straight up tasting ash. It’s a very aggressive and sort of gross taste to me.”
Dr. Cole Cerrato with OSU’s Food Science and Technology explains how he’s playing with grapes, to figure out what wildfires do to white wine, and ultimately how to conserve important harvests.
“After the smoke events that occurred here in Oregon, we had actually selected some of our red wine grapes, and smoked them. We smoked a lots of barley, or turned a lots of barley into smoke.”
As wildfires end up being more common, both in the Pacific Northwest and worldwide, he states it’s going to be more important to find answers to save valuable harvests.
Cerrato provided his talk entitled “Cleaning the Haze Around Wildfire Smoke’s Influence on White wine,” on Oregon State University’s Science Pub.