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Floor Speech

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Mr. PADILLA. Mr. President, I rise to introduce the Smoke Exposure Research Act of 2025. This legislation will bolster research at land- grant universities to better understand the impacts of wildfire smoke on wine grapes.

Increasingly frequent and catastrophic wildfires are threatening the longterm sustainability of important winegrowing regions in California, Washington, and Oregon. Vineyards, winery operations, and the communities they support are routinely facing the threat of wildfires that can not only destroy vineyards, but even those vineyards that escape direct wildfire damage can still suffer from prolonged smoke exposure, which can be absorbed into grapes and create an ashy taste known as smoke taint.

The impact has been particularly acute for California's 4,800 wineries and 5,900 winegrape growers, who have seen significant property loss, loss of tourism, and loss of production due to smoke- exposed grapes. The 2020 wildfires alone are estimated to have cost wineries and winegrape growers $3.7 billion both from immediate fire- caused losses as well as losses in future sales due to unharvested grapes exposed to wildfire smoke.

Yet, there is a limited understanding of how to measure and identify compounds that cause smoke taint and even less understanding of the mitigation and risk management measures necessary to reduce these impacts.

Recognizing the dearth of information and how much is at stake for the wine industry, Congress provided $5 million to the USDA to identify the compounds responsible for smoke taint and to develop mitigation methods to reduce or eliminate smoke taint.

This was a great first step, but we need more. That is what my bill would do.

The Smoke Exposure Research Act of 2025 would provide $32.5 million over years to ensure the sustainability of the wine industry in the face of climate crisis.

Specifically, this bill would direct the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service, in coordination with land- grant universities and researchers with viticulture and enology expertise, to identify the compounds responsible for smoke taint; establish standard sampling, testing, and screening tools for use in vineyards and wineries; and develop new risk assessment tools, mitigation measures, and management strategies for growers.

As reserachers from the University of California Davis, Washington State University, and Oregon State University explain in recent research, the impact of smoke taint is not predictable.

We cannot currently predict which grapes may have suffered damage based on anything intuitive, such as sight, smell, or even the flavor of fresh grapes. Freshness of wildfire smoke, length of exposure, variety of grape--the list goes on. There is so much we don't know.

That is why we need to pass the Smoke Exposure Research Act, to ensure we have strong science-based data for actual risk management and mitigation tools to protect the U.S. wine industry.

I would like to thank my colleagues Senator Jeff Merkley and Representatives Mike Thompson and Doug LaMalfa for their leadership in bolstering west coast winegrowing communities and for their partnership on this legislation.

I look forward to working with my colleagues to pass the Smoke Exposure Research Act as quickly as possible. ______

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