This bill focuses on studying the impact of wildfire smoke on wine grapes to help winemakers produce better quality wine. It aims to find solutions to prevent smoke damage from wildfires, which is increasingly important as wildfires become more common.
Smoke Exposure Research Act of 2025This bill directs the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) to conduct research relating to smoke exposure and wine grapes. This research must be done in coordination with land-grant colleges and universities that are located in California, Oregon, and Washington and have researched the effects of smoke exposure on viticulture and enology operations and practices. Specifically, ARS mustconduct research to identify the compounds responsible for smoke taint, conduct research to establish standard methodologies for sampling and testing smoke-exposed wine grapes and smoke-affected wines, establish a reliable database of background levels of smoke taint compounds that occur naturally in wine grapes, develop risk assessment tools or mitigation methods to reduce or eliminate smoke taint, andstudy compounds that can act as a barrier between wine grapes and smoke compounds.
