From KCRW, I'm Evan Klyman, and this is Good Food.

We begin this show by going back.

The year is 2020.

It was August, just a few months into the COVID-19 pandemic.

And after being cooped up for months, many in the West were forced indoors for yet another reason.

Well, 2020 was the West Coast's worst fire

season in history. It started with a gigantic lightning storm, 11,000 bolts of lightning, striking

Central and Northern California in just 36 hours. And it got worse from there. And by the end of

the fall, more than 8 million acres had burned

across 12 states. It was really just fire after fire after fire, including in all the wine

growing regions of California and Oregon. As if fintners didn't have enough to contend with,

you know, excessive heat, pests, too much rain,

not enough rain, wildfires bring a new challenge. The issue is smoke taint, which starts when

grapes absorb volatile compounds in wildfire smoke and ends with a bottle of wine that tastes

like an ashtray. Nicola Tweli recently explored the issue and what

winemakers and scientists are doing about it for The New Yorker. Hi. Hey. So great to have you back.

Great to be on the show again. Thank you. When winemakers in California were confronted with

these historic fires in 2020, how did they react? And what did they do when it

came time to harvest? Yeah, I mean, it's always a dilemma for a winemaker because you don't know

exactly how your grapes are going to be affected until someone pours that into a glass and drinks it.

So there are a lot of questions. Do you harvest? Do you not harvest? It's so expensive to harvest,

especially if you're hand harvesting, that if there's any risk, maybe you choose not to do that

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