The ability for wine producers to turn smoke-tainted fruit into an alternative income stream has been demonstrated with the assistance of a PhD scholarship funded by Wine Australia.
Distiller Hugh Holds was researching the impact of climate change on brandy production in Australia at the University of Adelaide when he received a PhD top-up scholarship from Wine Australia that enabled him to explore whether smoke-tainted fruit could be made into a commercially-viable brandy product.
A former winemaker, Hugh made the transition to making spirits following a couple of years in the grape and wine sector. After producing whiskey for about a decade, he found himself between jobs and decided to head back to university to undertake a PhD, focussing on brandy — a product he is keen to see take advantage of the rise in the popularity of craft spirits in Australia.
“There’s a boom in craft spirits which is seeing these drinks become trendy again, but this hasn’t involved brandy to the same extent it has other products like whisky or gin, though it is still a big player in many export markets, especially across Asia,” Hugh said. “It would be great to make it cool again in Australia like whisky has become. But there’s no point spending money on doing this until we know the risks to production from climate change factors.
"My PhD hopes to answer some of these questions and get ahead of any climate challenges. Spurred by the catastrophic bushfires of the 2019-20 summer and its devastating impact on multiple viticultural regions, the idea of making brandy from smoke-tainted winegrapes aroseas one of the core themes in my work.”
Hugh said he’d observed during his travels around the world during his whisky-making days that there was a market for smoky versions of the drink and wondered whether there might be scope for a smoky brandy.
He explained the aroma compounds that lead to smoke-taint in wine, principally phenol, guaiacol, eugenol and m-/o-/p- cresol, are the same ones that typically drive the smoky characteristic in premium whiskies, especially those produced with peat smoked malts, such as the famous malt whiskies of Islay in Scotland.
In 2019, the year before Hugh started his PhD, bushfires devastated parts of the Adelaide Hills. The fire affected the vineyard of Simon Tolley Wines at Woodside, leaving the fruit unsuitable for wine production. Fifth-generation grapegrower Simon Tolley decided to donate the fruit to the University of Adelaide, some of which Hugh was able to use to turn into brandy. The brandies produced in the course of the study were found not only to mitigate the sensory impact of the taint compounds but to be overall of a very high quality.
With a multi-generational family history of making brandy, Simon Tolley was excited to see the return of the family name to distilling and for Hugh’s efforts to be enjoyed widely. This culminated in a vatting of the experimental casks and a limited 400 bottle release of the smoked and barrel-aged brandy which was launched on 20 December — the fifth anniversary of the Cuddlee Creek bushfires.
