Fires in Bordeaux: is there a risk of smoke taint for the 2022 vintage?

It’s now been over a week since the first fires broke out, on Tuesday July 12, in the great swathes of pine forests around Bordeaux. As of 1pm Wednesday July 20, almost 20,600 hectares of land, mainly forest, have been destroyed.

The fires have centred around two main areas – firstly around La Teste-de-Buch, where around 7,000ha of forest have burnt, and over 20,000 people have been evacuated. This has impacted the whole area around the Dune de Pyla, where several popular camping sites were evacuated, and have now been up to 90% destroyed.

A second fire broke out around the commune of Landiras, near Langon, where to date around 13,600ha of forest has burned. It is this fire that has come closest to the vineyards, as this is near to sections of both AOC Graves and AOC Sauternes – and it is believed that it was started deliberately; with a local man arrested a few days ago.

They are beautiful areas with great natural biodiversity from the forest, but this has made them particularly vulnerable over the past week. So far no vineyards have been directly impacted, although more than 36,000 people have been evacuated, from Landiras and Saint-Symphorien – and this whole sector is too close for comfort. The commune of Landiras, for example, contains a large storage facility for Les Grands Chais de France, and is home to many wineries such as Vignobles Patrick Bernard and Château Clare, while Saint-Symphorien and surrounding communes including Budos and Guillos have several hundred wineries, mainly small family-owned estates, along with the beautiful 14th century Château de Budos, built by Pope Clément V. Sauternes and Barsac are not far away, although the furthest outskirts of vineyard land are all AOC Graves or AOC Bordeaux.

A smaller fire broke out in Vensac on July 18, in the northern section of the Médoc coastline, that burnt through 80ha and saw 600 people evacuated, but this has now been brought under control.

In total, 2,000 firemen, 8 Canadairs and 2 Dash planes have been brought in across the region, with the planes collecting water mainly from the Arcachon Bay and the Garonne river to dump over the affected areas.

Fire fighting planes by Pyla (video)

Cooler temperatures since July 20 – dropping from highs of 41C down to the early 30Cs – have given some breathing room to the efforts to contain things, but everything remains extremely dry, with just 12mm of rain falling in Pomerol on July 19, and only a few drops elsewhere across the region. The forecast for the next few days is continued low humidity, down to 10% in some places, and low winds, but with temperatures dropping, there is hope that efforts to contain the fires will now be effective, and progression has slowed significantly over the past 24 hours.

The question inevitably has moved to whether there will be an impact on the 2022 harvest, and whether smoke taint is something to be concerned about. Certainly we can smell and see the smoke all over the region, even in central Bordeaux. It is so strong that you can’t help but check and recheck your house for burning, before heading outside and seeing clouds of smoke hanging over the entire city.

Fires are not unknown in Bordeaux – both the 1949 and 1989 vintage saw many thousand hectares of forest burning – but these are the worst I have experienced in almost 20 years in the region. So far, everyone I speak to is remaining calm. The CIVB wine bureau has said that no vineyards have been impacted, and consultants are cautiously optimistic.

David Pernet of Sovivins told me this morning, ‘If you compare these fires to the terrible ones we have watched impact Napa vineyards in recent years, the flames have not got as close to the vines. Smoke contact has also remained low for now, particularly as for the first five days wind was blowing to the north and northeast, taking the smoke away from vineyard sectors. Recent days have seen it change to a southerly direction, which is more problematic, but the intensity and duration has not been long, and we remain optimistic that there will be no impact on the flavour profile of the wines’.

How accurate this assessment turns out to be remains to be seeen, as there is still no rain forecast for the forseeable future, and the season is not over yet. A few years ago, I drove around the entire outskirts of the Bordeaux vineyard, wanting to trace the outer limits of the appellation. The northwest outer limit of AOC Graves with rights for planting vines is the commune of Saucats, which has corn fields, hunting grounds and a few plots of vines on one side, and pine forests on the other. This is just on the outskirts of the fire-impacted areas.

Loic Pasquet, whose vineyard Liber Pater is in Barrèyre, Landiras, saw one fire approach as close as 500m from his vines, but it has now receded to 7km. He has been one of the few estate owners to give regular updates (many of these images have been provided by him). He was evacuated from the vineyard a few days ago, but has since returned to find there has been no damage to the rare ungrafted vines that he has planted there. ‘The vines have not been impacted,’ he said, ‘only the smoke is a worry right now – and we are not out of the woods, as we have both August and September to get through before harvest’.

All experts agree that a final diagnosis will not be possible until the fires are out. Nicolas Dutour, who is an expert in the subject at the university of Montpellier, explained the expected timelines. ‘Fire close to vineyards is of course an extremely sensitive subject as it can impact the quality of the wines,’ he said. ‘Smoke taint can potentially appear as early in the season as flowering if the contamination is strong enough, even if there is nothing more until harvest’.

‘We have unfortunately been able to study this subject over the past few years in Provence and the Languedoc, and now better understand the zones at risk and the potential mitigation efforts (even if imperfect). If you have ever been in a forest that has been on fire, you will know that for days after the fire has ben put out, the powerful aroma remains. In the case of these fires across Bordeaux, we will be bringing together different wine syndicates and other collective bodies over the coming months, getting all satellite data from CNES (the national space agency), and then evaluate the necessity of tasting grapes to see if there has been any organoleptic impact. But we remain optimistic at this stage’.

You can see the two sites that have been worst impacted, and follow the progression of the fires, via the Copernicus site. 

The Australian Wine Research Institute has an excellent background on the risks of smoke taint in wine.