My frenemy, Brett

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Sharon Bowman

Sharon Bowman
The first time I was ever on a wine board, I thought people were making fun of someone named Brett. My heart went out to him, the poor guy.

Last week, I felt like throwing a glass in Brett's face, because of a 2006 Saint-Joseph recommended to me by the caviste at Caves du Panthon. It was a gorgeous, silky and actually nicely complex wine that was just stomach-turningly marred by Our Ostracized Friend.

Made me rethink my threshold for flaws. Some are good; the touch of imperfection that is more piquant than plastic similitude and some simulacrum of "perfection."

But sometimes, you just go, "Bleh."
 
originally posted by Sharon Bowman:
My frenemy, BrettThe first time I was ever on a wine board, I thought people were making fun of someone named Brett. My heart went out to him, the poor guy.

Last week, I felt like throwing a glass in Brett's face, because of a 2006 Saint-Joseph recommended to me by the caviste at Caves du Panthon. It was a gorgeous, silky and actually nicely complex wine that was just stomach-turningly marred by Our Ostracized Friend.

Made me rethink my threshold for flaws. Some are good; the touch of imperfection that is more piquant than plastic similitude and some simulacrum of "perfection."

But sometimes, you just go, "Bleh."
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I've known for years that I'm more Brett-tolerant than most, in stark contrast to my sensitivity to TCA and oxidative notes. How could I not be, after all, having cut my teeth on Bordeaux from Cordier and wines of the Rhne valley? However, a recent bottle of the '98 Dom. du Pga Cuve Rserve pushed even my tolerance to the limit. It wasn't flat-out shitty, but it certainly was like a bushel basket of Band-Aids. But then there was that bottle of Peyra SG that Mike Lawton brought to Toledo a couple of years ago: dirty diaper in a bottle -- yummers.

Mark Lipton
 
But brett presents in so many different ways due to the many different volatile phenols, intermediate vinyls, fatty acids et al that the wild yeast can produce depending on the raw materials and the winemaking. The range of smells is huge from spicy and sweaty leather through horsy, barnyard, plastic and pharmaceutical on to shitty. The most extreme descriptor I recall in a forum was 'primate cage at the zoo'. I have difficulty in appreciating 'dirty nappies' but I am sure the 'primate cage' would be a bridge too far.

So not only are there very large differences in individual sensitivities but large differences in the compounds actually producing the aroma and taste.

When I 'get' brett it only becomes an issue for me [as with any aroma or taste and certainly a fault that might dominate a wine] when it distracts from the wine as a whole. If it fits it's OK but if it distracts then it's a problem. My brett problems tend to be on the right hand side of the spectrum above when they occur.

For a vision of someone where brett has apparently completely ruined their experience of a wine take a look at 1999 Chateau d'Armailhac on Cellar Tracker where a certain individual has multiple TNs. I have 2 cases of that wine [in fact I am currently drinking a bottle] and my bottles are very good if slightly bretty. Of course transportation and storage temperatures may have greatly affected the development and presentation of brett in his bottles.
 
mark--i love your comment on cordier properties. many years before i know what brett was, i was often able to pick out cordier properties in blind bordeaux tastings, because of all that horse sweat and saddle leather. my guess is that their barrels started out at gruaud larose, then moved down to talbot, then meyney and clos de jacobins, and so on.
 
I am either:

1) extremely sensitive to brett because whenever I notice it I find the wine gross and undrinkable - I cannot stand that band-aid smell.

2) not even remotely sensitive to brett because I don't notice it at all in wines that other people insist are brett-infested.

Still haven't figured out which. As far as I'm concerned it's just one of those things that's sometimes in wine and sometimes OK and sometimes not.
 
originally posted by VLM:
originally posted by SFJoe:
I find it bugs me more and more, at high levels anyway. It gets monotonous.
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I'm the same way. I can't see through it much anymore.
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It's weird, I used to love it, now I mostly hate it, almost on par with corkiness. A little dose in some wines can be ok but it is usually so volatile that it is just too much of a wild card.

And I'm not sure Cordier funk is all about brett - it strikes me as something a little different - perhaps a laissez faire approach to cleanliness...
 
Keith,

Could be both. You could not be very sensitive to it but still have a threshold over which it destroys your experience.

I mention this because I may be that way too. I had mostly positive experiences with low brett levels for a long time but then encountered some heavily bretty bottles and just couldn't stand it.

The '98 Pegau must have substantial variation from bottle to bottle on this score, I had one just a couple of months ago and it was beautiful, with little to no sign of the beast.
 
originally posted by Keith Levenberg:
I am either:

1) extremely sensitive to brett because whenever I notice it I find the wine gross and undrinkable - I cannot stand that band-aid smell.

2) not even remotely sensitive to brett because I don't notice it at all in wines that other people insist are brett-infested.

Still haven't figured out which. As far as I'm concerned it's just one of those things that's sometimes in wine and sometimes OK and sometimes not.
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Sounds to me as though you are sensitive to a particular part of [compound/s in] the wide range of brettanomyces products but less sensitive to others. And when you smell something that doesn't 'fit' a [any] wine, like band-aid it's a major turn-off for you. Others might be railing against other brett smells to which you are not so sensitive.

I think most people are like that. I certainly am although the band-aid/pharmaceutical/medicinal component is not usually the one that I notice unless it is very marked.
 
originally posted by Jeff Grossman:
I dislike the Band-Aid smell and the tinny taste, but a bit of horse and leather isn't so bad.
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I agree. Sort of.

I don't quite know how to define my threshold but I can take a bit of sweat to sweeten the fruit. When it starts to get much more than that I get turned off. Actually, horse is probably too far for me. Maybe just a bit of sweaty leather. I like to taste the grapes afterall.
 
Nigel makes an important point. Brettanomyces is a complicated little bug, and it lives a complicated life with its secondary metabolites. If you have plenty of lysine, you get "mousy" tetrahydropyridines. You easily get 4-ethylphenol and 4-ethylguiacol.

These things all have different flavors, and different variants of Brett under different conditions will give you different tastes--poopy, band-aid, horsey, the works.

Different people have different sensitivities to each of these, and have been mentally trained to identify some of them but probably not others as "wine flaws." Or maybe they've just been revolted by individual flavors. But some of what I think of as "tree bark" characters in Loire cabernet franc is sometimes Brett. I don't always distinguish them. We can perhaps draw a veil over the question of "garrigue" in certain famous wines from the south of France.

Last point--live vs. dead. Live Brett is active at decent temperatures--it keeps metabolizing, making new stuff, eating fruity esters and so on. It produces huge bottle variation, and can totally kill wines. Dead Brett--you live with what you've got. tetrahydropyridines can go away, 4-ethylphenol is probably forever.
 
PS--for those who care and don't already very well know, SO2 inactivates Brett and other things, and can save wines from the live Brett thing. The metabolite flavors will still be there if they happened before bottling, but the Brett won't still be working its demonic magic.
 
originally posted by SFJoe:
Nigel makes an important point. Brettanomyces is a complicated little bug, and it lives a complicated life with its secondary metabolites. If you have plenty of lysine, you get "mousy" tetrahydropyridines. You easily get 4-ethylphenol and 4-ethylguiacol.

These things all have different flavors, and different variants of Brett under different conditions will give you different tastes--poopy, band-aid, horsey, the works.

Different people have different sensitivities to each of these, and have been mentally trained to identify some of them but probably not others as "wine flaws." Or maybe they've just been revolted by individual flavors. But some of what I think of as "tree bark" characters in Loire cabernet franc is sometimes Brett. I don't always distinguish them. We can perhaps draw a veil over the question of "garrigue" in certain famous wines from the south of France.

Last point--live vs. dead. Live Brett is active at decent temperatures--it keeps metabolizing, making new stuff, eating fruity esters and so on. It produces huge bottle variation, and can totally kill wines. Dead Brett--you live with what you've got. tetrahydropyridines can go away, 4-ethylphenol is probably forever.
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Fasckinating. Merci.
 
originally posted by SFJoe:
Live Brett is active at decent temperatures
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What's a "decent temperature?" Can live brett be ameliorated through storage, or are you talking about fermentation temperatures...or...?
 
originally posted by The Wine Mule:
originally posted by SFJoe:
Live Brett is active at decent temperatures
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What's a "decent temperature?" Can live brett be ameliorated through storage, or are you talking about fermentation temperatures...or...?
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Marc Angeli thinks his wines should never see temperatures above 12*C. SO2 will help an awful lot. Brett isn't the only thing that can eat the nutrients left in wine after yeast starve.

So if you have a totally refrigerated supply chain (Otto?), maybe you're OK. If you keep things cool after you buy them it helps a lot (assuming it wasn't already in the wine before bottling). So if you drink a lot of low- or no-SO2 wines, storage is especially important to you.

If you drink a lot of yellowtail, not to worry.
 
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