WORLD-first winery specialised smoke detectors have shown to relieve stress in vineyard smoke management since their rollout across North East Victoria 18 months ago.

Wineries and grape growers throughout the North East Wine Zone (NEWZ) gathered at GOTAFE’s Tone Road campus in Wangaratta recently to develop a decision support tool to help guide their business decisions during smoke events.

Throughout the day attendees were updated on all the latest information on how to handle smoke events in the vineyard and winery and develop a smoke support tool.

The event included presentations and workshops from the Australian Wine Research Institute, Forest Fire Management, and La Trobe University Professor Ian Porter, who developed the world first Wine Industry Smoke Detectors (WISD).

Since the rollout of the smoke detectors 18 months ago across the North East, Professor Porter and his team of researchers have been analysing data, durability and effectiveness of the detectors in the field.

Professor Porter said while the past season has been relatively smoke and fire free, it was actually beneficial for ensuring the sensors work effectively in low smoke environments before a more dangerous fire season approaches.

“The sensors mark one relates to the amount of smoke dose in your bottle… it’s revolutionary because it takes account of all the steps all the way, from smoke dose through to grape levels, wine levels,” he said.

“We’ve gone through the validation stage, all the bugs, the dust getting in, the durability of the sensors, how we’re going to modify those factors and it’s really good we’ve done that; we didn’t have time to do that upfront, we had to get 100 out in two months.

“We’ve also had some smoke events that people have been worried about so we had a few case studies to look at.

“They’ve only been very minor smoke events but they’ve still upset the growers, so it’s our learnings from that on how to let them know that it’s an event that’s not going to have an impact.”

Chrismont Wines winemaker Warren Proft said the sensors were an important development, recalling how the 2020 bushfires impacted his winery, unable to harvest red wine due to smoke taint levels.

“This is vital information for us to continue into the future, understanding what level of smoke is going to cause us problems because we’re always going to have smoke whether it’s from neighbouring farmers burning off or Forest Fire Management doing burn offs,” he said.

“It’s nice to understand when to start planning that we may or may not have a smokey vintage.

“We still get smoke in the King Valley and that’s a classic example of the smoke levels from those detectors were able to give us confidence that we could pursue at least white wines in the upper king which we did and that was quite successful.

“It just helps managing risks and manage your future approach to wine making.”

According to Professor Porter, the smoke sensors have relieved a lot of stress within the industry since their installation, giving wineries a greater understanding of when smoke taint will properly affect their grapes.

Professor Porter said his team will continue to develop the smoke sensors over the next 18 months as they look to secure further funds before taking the sensors outside the North East.

“We need to make sure we keep investing for a little bit longer until growers fully understand its worth and then a commercial company will pick it up, they’ll run it and then it will be self-sustaining,” he said.

“We’ve got to be smart about the next 18 months, we want two seasons and by then the smoke sensors will be changed, it’ll be a more durable unit, we’ll actually be reducing cost so it’ll be cheaper and it’ll be very manageable in the field.”