ETS Laboratories and Napa Valley Grapegrowers Partner on Database of Smoke-Affected Grapes

Press Release

​In partnership with the Napa Valley Grapegrowers, ETS Laboratories has been building a database of grape samples to help growers and winemakers better understand smoke impacts on winegrapes, work with insurance companies to protect their assets, and create individual baselines for the varieties in their vineyards. Since the program launched in 2021, this effort has helped to inform the global methodology around smoke taint testing.
Following the catastrophic wildfires of 2020, the winegrowing community expressed interest in an extended list of analytical markers of smoke exposure, however two challenges were identified.
The first challenge was with a class of markers known as “glycosylated” or “bound” compounds. Until the Fall of 2020, reference standards were not available for these types of compounds, and there was not consensus between specialists about which ones to measure.  ETS Laboratories worked with the Wine Institute Technical Committee, the Australian Wine Research Institute (AWRI), and major wineries to establish a common list for these markers, as well as facilitate and fund the production of analytical standards. These reference standards are now available, allowing testing laboratories worldwide to produce comparable results for glycosylated markers.

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