2-hour wildfire evacuation notice issued for some Fort McMurray neighbourhoods
A wildfire evacuation alert for some Fort McMurray residents has been updated to a two-hour evacuation notice.
The raging wildfires in British Columbia have already destroyed homes and forests, and now the province’s wine industry is at risk of going up in smoke too.
Researchers say ash and other toxic residue from the smoke could be seeping into the grapes, tainting them and making them bitter.
“Smoke-exposed grapes can sometimes lead to wines that are… really dominated by these smoky, ashy cigarette-like aromas that are pretty much unacceptable to consumers,” Wesley Zandberg, a chemistry professor at the University of British Columbia, told CTV’s Your Morning on Tuesday.
There are currently 262 active wildfires in B.C., with 85 of them in the Okanagan region -- famous for its vineyards and wineries.
While it’s sometimes easy to remove the grapes, which simply smell like smoke, other times, smoke particles can bind onto sugar molecules in the grapes and make the contamination imperceptible to the human nose, Zandberg said.
“It’s a little bit of a game to predict what the wine quality is going to be like.”
His research is focused on detecting that contamination before grapes are harvested.
Figuring that out will be crucial for winemakers who don’t want to invest time and money harvesting and fermenting tonnes of grapes, only to discover the wine is tainted and must be thrown out.
One of the ways Zandberg said winemakers could combat smoke is by using different yeasts or refining agents to remove the smoke taint as grapes are being harvested.
However, Zandberg is trying to get ahead of the problem even earlier in the wine-making process by trying to prevent the grapes from becoming tainted before they leave the vineyard. His team is looking at government-approved agricultural sprays, which could shield the grapes from the smoky compounds from seeping in.
“The jury is still out,” he admitted. “Our results sometimes show we achieve crop protection. Sometimes we don’t. So these is an area we’re still actively working on.”
Contamination also largely depends on how far the smoke has travelled, Zandberg said. So smoke that’s come from farther away has less of a chance to affect wine grapes.
“We know that in 2020, B.C. had a relatively mild fire year, but we got a lot of smoke from California late in the season, when grapes are especially vulnerable,” he said.
“But that was old smoke and winemakers here didn’t really notice much taint then.”
British Columbia has already surpassed the 10-year average for the number of forest fires and total hectares burned.
So the work of Zandberg and colleagues in Australia is going to be even more pressing, as climate change continues to drive up the number of wildfires and extreme weather events.
A wildfire evacuation alert for some Fort McMurray residents has been updated to a two-hour evacuation notice.
Saskatchewan RCMP are set to provide an update on what the service calls a 'significant' sexual assault and internet child exploitation investigation.
Canadian LifeLabs customers who filed an application for a class-action settlement began receiving their payments this week, though at a much lower amount than initially expected.
Nobel laureate Alice Munro, the Canadian literary giant who became one of the world's most esteemed contemporary authors and one of history's most honoured short story writers, has died at age 92.
Wildfires have led Environment Canada to issue air quality advisories for parts of B.C., Alberta, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and the Northwest Territories, as forecasters warn the smoke could drift farther east.
An American accused of sexually assaulting a Pennsylvania college student in 2013 and later sending her a Facebook message that said, 'So I raped you,' has been detained in France after a three-year search.
The annual list of Canada's top restaurants in the country was just released and here are the places that made the 2024 cut.
Ontario Provincial Police are responding to a fatal collision involving two vehicles on Highway 417 in Ottawa's west end on Tuesday morning.
The Israeli flag is flying at Ottawa City Hall today to mark the country's national day, with plans to hold a private ceremony to mark Israel's Independence Day. There is a significant police presence at City Hall, including security barriers outside the main doors.
A team is ready to help an entangled North Atlantic right whale in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
A $200 reward is being offered by a North Vancouver family for the safe return of their beloved chicken, Snowflake.
Two daughters and a mother were reunited online 40 years later thanks to a DNA kit and a Zoom connection despite living on three separate continents and speaking different languages.
Mother's Day can be a difficult occasion for those who have lost or are estranged from their mom.
YES Theatre Young Company opened its acclaimed kids’ show, One Small Step, at Sudbury Theatre Centre on Saturday.
An Ottawa pizzeria is being recognized as one of the top 20 deep-dish pizzas in the world.
A family of fifth generation farmers from Ituna, Sask. are trying to find answers after discovering several strange objects lying on their land.
A Listowel, Ont. man, drafted by the Hamilton Tigercats last week, is also getting looks from the NFL, despite only playing 27 games of football in his life.
The threat of zebra mussels has prompted the federal government to temporarily ban watercraft from a Manitoba lake popular with tourists.