“Some of it was just hell on wheels.” Wildfire smoke from 2020 cost the wine industry $3 billion, according to a 2021 estimate published by the market research firm bw166. Patricia Green Cellars met the moment with a creative pivot that helped the business claw back some revenue and establish lines of two drinks Anderson never imagined he’d produce: brandy and whiskey. “I don’t like sweet things that much in general,” Anderson says. “I drink dry wines. I make dry wines. So to have a whiskey that fits in with that palette, that profile of things that I like, has kind of turned me off to other American whiskeys.” Winemakers are loath to toss any amount of product unless it’s totally unsalvageable. In Europe and California, producers sometimes sell smoke-tainted wine to major manufacturers to be blended into large batches. It can be used in fertilizer or made into food products, like red wine vinegar or the pinot barbecue sauce Durant Vineyards in Dayton made from 2020 smoke-spoiled grapes. Another option is to distill spoiled wine into liquor. Brandy, in fact, is typically made by distilling wine. A friend’s attempt to turn smoked wine into brandy had turned Anderson’s stomach with one taste; it seemed to amplify the smoke rather than obscure it, he says. But Anderson eventually let distiller Lynsee Sardell give it a go. Sardell, who is based in Forest Grove, has a decidedly hands-on, “analog” approach to running a still — no timers or electronic equipment. When Sardell returned with a brandy a week later, Anderson was floored. It was clean, buttery, richly textured — far from the overly sweet, butterscotchy concoctions often sold in the U.S. Anderson was now sold on brandy, but he knew producing thousands of gallons of the stuff would create another overstock problem. Sardell had another idea. As she explains, all whiskey needs two things: something sweet, often corn, that can be distilled; and something to make it taste good, typically rye or barley. Starting in 2021, Patricia Green Cellars began purchasing heritage strains of barley and rye from small farms in Oregon to be malted and distilled. The individual grain distillates were combined with small amounts of the smoked brandy to create a hybrid “grain and grape” whiskey. “I told Jim, we can make something that’s really delicious and easy to drink,” Sardell says. “And I gave him every reason to say no to me. I told him, ‘OK, this is the coolest route, but it’s also the most difficult route.’ And he was like, ‘Yep, let’s do it.’” In 2022 the Patricia Green team purchased a distillery in Forest Grove to be operated by Sardell. Today Patricia Green ages spirits in repurposed French oak wine barrels. Current production is around 300 cases with a capacity of around 1,000 (compared to 15,000 to 20,000 cases of wine produced annually by the winery). Fortified Wine The smoke problem isn’t new to the wine industry, and Patricia Green Cellars is far from the only Oregon winery hit hard by 2020 fires. Oregon’s more than 1,100 wineries and vineyards, scattered across a large and complex viticultural geography, each have a different experience every wildfire season. But because the smoke problem is so far-reaching, there’s ample energy in the industry to prepare for and remediate smoke damage, according to a spokesperson for the Oregon Wine Board. Researchers at a number of West Coast institutions are committed to helping the industry face smoke events. Washington State University researchers implemented a system of smoke detectors in Yakima Valley wine country. And with partial funding from the USDA, Oregon State University is engaged in a number of smoke-related projects in the areas of viticulture, food science and wine chemistry. For one, OSU researchers are working on a spray-on coating to mitigate smoke- volatile phenols. Viticulturist Alec Levin and his team analyze samples at OSU’s Smoke, Barrels of whiskey age in a building on the winery grounds. Distiller Lynsee Sardell 23
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