Science Pub - February 14, 2022

Speaker:

Cole Cerrato, Post Doc Scholar, Food Science Technology, College of Agricultural Sciences, OSU

Event Description:

Wildfire smoke is no surprise to anyone on the west coast of the United States, especially those of us that lived through the 2020 wildfire events. 2020 was a particularly difficult year for one of Willamette Valley’s premier crops, wine grapes. Vintners in the valley and all along the west coast dealt with potential impacts to wine quality due to the overwhelming presence of wildfire smoke. Unlike nearly every other crop, wine grapes are particularly sensitive to wildfire smoke, often acquiring ‘burnt’, ‘ashy’, or ‘campfire-like’ sensory characteristics after fermentation. Researchers at Oregon State University have been investigating which chemicals in smoke have the greatest impact in wine and how best to mitigate the off-flavor characteristics of smoked-affected wine.

In this discussion Oregon State University postdoctoral scholar Cole Cerrato, Ph.D. will discuss some background about wine chemistry, give a demonstration of how to drink wine to best sense flavor and aroma characteristics, and describe his research with Dr. Elizabeth Tomasino on smoke-affected wine.

Sponsors of the OSU Science Pub include OSU and OSU-Cascades, and OMSI, with production by Connect Central Oregon.