From the ashes of the Cudlee Creek fire in the Adelaide Hills five years ago has emerged a brandy created from the damaged grapes.
All of the vines in fifth-generation grape grower Simon Tolley’s vineyard were either burnt or smoke-tainted by the fire, which swept through the region in December 2019.
About 500 tonnes of grapes were damaged on his property alone, while about 1,100 hectares of grapes were affected throughout the region.
“The smoke came at this time of year when the berries were hard green and there was very little experience with making wine with grapes that were so hard green,” Mr Tolley said.
The vineyards at Simon Tolley Wines were among thousands of hectares destroyed by fire. (Supplied: Simon Tolley Wines)
After the Black Summer bushfires affected many wine-producing regions around the country, a lot of research effort went into various ways of dealing with smoke-taint, from preventing the smoke entering the grapes to removing the smoky flavours.
PhD student Hugh Holt was investigating the effect of climate change on brandy production in Australia and was keen to see if it was possible to make brandy from the smoke-affected grapes.
“There’s a pedigree of these flavours being acceptable in whiskey products, whiskeys from Ireland and Scotland are noticeably smoky, they’re sold on that basis,” Mr Holt said.
Mr Tolley was keen to be a part of the research so he donated 20 tonnes of grapes to the project.
Mr Tolley and Mr Holds with the barrels of brandy. (Supplied: Simon Tolley Wines)
To make the brandy, the fruit is initially fermented into wine, which enables the grape to release smoky character.
It’s at that point the smoky taste is most obvious and it can range from very slight to an acrid, ashtray taste.
The wine is then distilled, which removes some of the smoky compounds. Then, to eventually become brandy it needs to be aged in a barrel.
“A lot of spirit barrels, they’re charred on the inside, they’re not just toasted like wine barrels and that char acts like activated carbon does in your water filters at home and then it helps remove some of those [smoky] flavour compounds as well,” Mr Holt said.
“So it’s a combination of factors, you’re taking away some flavours, you’re adding more different flavours and, by all those processes coming together in the end product, it helps change the flavour profile into something that’s more acceptable.”
So how did the finished product end up?
Mr Holt said in the end they didn’t really answer the question of whether consumers would accept a smoky brandy in the way they would accept a smoky whiskey.
The University of Adelaide research project distilled the grapes spoiled by the 2019 bushfires. (Supplied: Ben MacMahon, MacMahon Images)
“The amount of smoky compounds that it takes to make something taste smoky is a lot less for a wine than it is for a spirit product, so by the time we went through all of this processing, the smoky character was a lot less noticeable,” Mr Holt said.
The research has shown it is possible to use smoke-tainted grapes to make a brandy, even if the end product doesn’t taste particularly smoky.
The brandy research was one of many approaches universities and research groups undertook after the Black Summer bushfires to help the wine and grape industry cope with the increased risk of fire.
Some of the work looked at preventing the smoke entering the grapes while others looked at removing the smoky flavours.
Making brandy from smoke-tainted grapes is considered a viable solution. (Supplied: Simon Tolley Wines)
University of Adelaide’s head winemaker Associate Professor Paul Grbin was involved in a number of projects to help the wine industry after the Black Summer bushfires.
The work has importance outside of Australia too, with so many major wine-producing regions around the world, such as California and Europe, being impacted by fires.
“There aren’t really any good solutions at the moment … [but] this project [of] converting smoke-affected wine into brandy is … a viable solution,” Mr Grbin said.
“The quality is reduced if it stays as wine but by converting it into brandy you are actually increasing the quality so you are value-adding to the product rather than taking away.
“You can’t turn it all into brandy but it is a solution.”
