Brett

[Neville Nessuno]

Morning all

What sort of features does a wine affected with Brett present on the palate as opposed to the nose?

If it is on the nose, will it then always carry to the palate or can you just smell it only in some cases.

I can find little material on the taste side to assist me

TIA

NN

[TORB]

This link may help http://www.wineanorak.com/brettanomyces.htm but in a nut shell, flavours can range from bandaid through to liquid smoke; or from horse to mouse; and sometimes finish with a metalic edge.

[Wizz]

Neville, have a look at the 03 Barossa notes. There were wines with bandaid, horse hair on the nose, but these didnt carry through to the palate much. The one I thought was worst affected tasted metallic as well as smelled it.

cheers

Andrew

[JohnP]

Neville,

I think you are going to see a lot more notes on 'bretty' wines, cause it now seems to be the in thing to find brett in a wine. Whether it actually is brett that people find will be something to consider - is it really there or is it the power of auto suggestion; who knows?? I know if I can smell what I think is brett, then I can usually taste it as well - and it is usually the metal toned finish that is the sealer for me. I also think that claiming 'its bretty' simply from the nose is a bit of a rush to judgement in many cases.

Quite obviously some recent changes to winemaking practices are more likely to aid/assist/promote brett in a wine - the less sulphur used the more brett, the more sugar (the higher the pH the less effective sulphur) the more brett. So Barossa 2003 could be a bretty year - it has some of the hallmarks. And maybe - hypothetical only - the stelvin sealed wines of 2003 (Barossa) may be more bretty than the cork sealed - will obviously depend on the level of sulphur and how well it is used to a large extent!!

[TORB]

John,

One aspect your thoughts do not take into account is that many of the better small producers are now well aware of the threat of Brett and what it can and does do to wine. Apparently testing from Brett through the AWRI has gone up exponentially over the last few years.

[JohnP]

John,

One aspect your thoughts do not take into account is that many of the better small producers are now well aware of the threat of Brett and what it can and does do to wine. Apparently testing from Brett through the AWRI has gone up exponentially over the last few years.

TORB,

Granted. My comments are reasonably broad and as such take no specific account of the other activities of winemakers designed to reduce brett. Quite obviously it is a more complex issue than I might have implied.

[TORB]

John,

It's hugely complexed but the rest of your origional post is pretty well spot on.

There are and will continue to be more Brett wines found as people learn what to look for but there will aslo be incorrect diagnosis too; just look at the 03 Draycott which has fooled me, Wizz and Campbell -- and we are not exactly beginners.

Whilst some wineries are worried about Brett and doing everything to avoid it, some wineries as you point out are going down the "minimalist intervention" mode that is fraught with danger. And some of those will turn out to be a case of good fruit ruined by good intentions.

[jezza]

What I also think should be added (though I sure some will disagree) brett can also be a good thing in small doses. It can be complexing in red wine styles and can be a usefull tool. But it is also very hard to control once it is in the winery, wine and finished product. It can be also blamed for a lot of bottle variation seen in some wine (once cork is taken into account)

cheers

[MartinE]

brett can also be a good thing in small doses. It can be complexing in red wine styles and can be a usefull tool.

...Very Burgundian of you, Jezza !

[JohnP]

brett can also be a good thing in small doses. It can be complexing in red wine styles and can be a usefull tool.

...Very Burgundian of you, Jezza !

I thought more Hunterish actually!

[MartinE]

brett can also be a good thing in small doses. It can be complexing in red wine styles and can be a usefull tool.

...Very Burgundian of you, Jezza !

I thought more Hunterish actually!

[Grant]

Don't forget that many have of the greatest classed growths of Bordeaux have from time to time exhibited noticeable levels of brett. Not too much fuss made about that in the past, although the imputations of the word seem far greater now, almost the mark of Cain!

Cheers

[Neville Nessuno]

Thanks everyone

Good up to date unemotive information on this topic is hard to find. Much of the stuff available lacks objectivity and is tainted (pardon the pun) so your collective opinions are appreciated as well as the article reference Ric.

Interestingly the wine is a 2001 Victorian Shiraz. I will open the second bottle tonight after having a think about some of this information.

In the interests of science I will look for the metallic taste but I not looking forward to it.

Having said that I wanted the right info for evaluation as I think there is a lot of talk over wine faults in wine nowadays (some justified and some not) and as they say a little knowledge goes a long way.

Thanks again all

NN

[vinum]

What I also think should be added (though I sure some will disagree) brett can also be a good thing in small doses. It can be complexing in red wine styles and can be a usefull tool. But it is also very hard to control once it is in the winery, wine and finished product. It can be also blamed for a lot of bottle variation seen in some wine (once cork is taken into account)

cheers

I have to disagree (to a certian extent), Brettanomyces is not a useful winemaking tool, however it can add complexity to a wine. Given that control of Brettanomyces once found within the winery is difficult to eliminate, use of such yeast species (especially given that it is a non-fermentative yeast) does not lend itself to industrial usage. This is a consequence of the production of 4ep and 4eg (the volatiles responsible for the clove-like to horsey to band aid characteristic), its profliferative nature and its ethanol tolerance etc...

Cheers
Colin.

[Rich]

Once you find it in a bottle throw out the case !!! Recently I had 4 dozen wines I threw out as they had after 5 years gone bretty and had been great just 3 months earlier all from the same producer all bottled at the same time and none of it sterile bottled.

Now in another part of the country I see a lot of small producers wanting wild ferments. these wines can be good early on but I always recommed lots of SO2 and sterile filtering (which normally flies against their philosophy) and I think the chances of being OK in 3-5 years is bugger all.

Many of these wines will end up in older barrels which is the typical nurturing ground for the yeast. But I had a wine go bretty in primary ferment from one vineyard. all fruit is now sulphited in the vineyard at harvest (stopping of this practice is what has caused the epidemic) acid as mentioned earlier has also been reduced by many especially for US destined wines as they are soft and soapy which is seen as preferable to adding 15-20g/l of sugar to make it palatable to the yanks (like "our" BIG MAC does with his wines). This makes any sulphiting all but useless.

You'll have to get used to seeing more and more of it in the years to come until the "hippy winemakers" (I am a bitch) are punished for their efforts in pushing people away from "inferior technically correct wines"

[Guest]

The idea that wild yeast fermentation goes hand in hand with brettanomyces is hilariously wrong. good one rich!

now, how about we go through a treasure trove of great, bechmark french wine that has aged for 40 or 50 or 60 years, still drinks magnificently, was wild yeast fermented and aged in old oak, saw little intervention in the cellar and would kill just about anything that saw the opposite set of practices.

brett in barossa reds has nothing to do with wild yeast or minimal intervention. Do you think the 03 mamre brook cabernet was low intervention? do you think 2001 penfolds thomas hyland shiraz was low intervention? do you think 1998 henschke mt edelstone was low intervention? come on, all these are bretty wines, for good or ill. They all would have been made on cultured yeast, with modern windemaking techniques to the fore.

Brett likes oxygen. Brett likes sugar. Brett likes high pH, and it loves wood, new and old (some people think it loves new oak more than old, some people think the opposite, end conclusion seems to be that it just loves wood, full stop).

sterile filtering produces sterile wines. good in some cases, if it matches the wine's style, but bad in other cases. It should be applied on a wine by wine basis. To use it across all wines is either insanity or an admission that the mid road is all you ever aspired to.

[Grant]

Read some research suggesting that it particularly likes the wood cellulose in new barrels, and can multiply more dramatically in such an environment.

Cheers

[Rich]

The practices encouraged in wild fermentation can only assist Brett.

I'm sure there are some great old wines out there that would have been sulphited early the french have typically had much more SO2 used in their wines than Australians.

Cultured wines will still have it yes but it will be more apparent in wines that haven't finished 3-5 g/l sugar and Have a low SO2 as you said

[vinum]

The practices encouraged in wild fermentation can only assist Brett.

I'm sure there are some great old wines out there that would have been sulphited early the french have typically had much more SO2 used in their wines than Australians.

Cultured wines will still have it yes but it will be more apparent in wines that haven't finished 3-5 g/l sugar and Have a low SO2 as you said

I have to disagree with both of those comments, firstly it is very hard to generalise and say that the French have used more sulphur in their wines, given that sulphur regimes are very different between varities, let alone the difference between red and white culitvars. Furthermore it also noteworthy that suphur regimes for both inoculated and uninoculated fermentations in general are fairly similar. This is personal experience.

Yeast can catabolise and metabolise sulphur dioxide, consequently even an add of 100 parts prior to ferementation can be metabolised. Additionally given that Brettanomyces will proliferate under conditions as high as 60 parts total then the issue is very separate to that of the inoculum. The issue with Brettanomyces spp. is that they catabolise ferulic and coumaric acids (amongst others) with very little carbon source available (read less than 2 g/L - dry) it is through this metabolic process that the volatile phenols form, which lead to spoilage. Further to this the common misconception about uninoculated fermentations, there are right and wrong scenarios which they should be used, however just because a fermentation has not been inoculated, it does not lend itself to greater tendency of sticking. A far bigger issue is nitrogen timing and addition, rather than inoculum. Therefore, I cant find a definitive link between inoculation procedure and Brettanomyces proliferation. It is probably noteworthy that yeast do not (especially Saccharomyces) over-winter on grapes, there is no readily available carbon source available (under conditions of good berry integrity), therefore it is primarily winery borne yeast that are responsible for fermentation.

Cheers
Colin.

[TORB]

Colin, (and all)

Interetsing thread indeed. I think I understook about every second word in that last post, mainly words like "and" "but "disagree" "because" etc; but the word I loved most was catabolise. Now I have to work out a way of using that in my pet shop.

[Rory]

Neville,

Trust me.... don't go down this path..... Brett becomes evident in everything! It's a conspiracy... I've even tasted corked water!

Rory

[Neville Nessuno]

Ric

thanks for providing reassurance to the rest of us in what became a quite technical discussion

Rory

You are right, opened the second bottle and whilst not the same degree of aromas, similiar enough to detect Brett. The taste is hard to specify as I cant get barnyard or metallic tastes but the aromas are and remain classic brett.

The other problem is once you smell it you starting looking for in each successive bottle (and other wines).

NN

[KMP]

There are and will continue to be more Brett wines found as people learn what to look for but there will aslo be incorrect diagnosis too; just look at the 03 Draycott which has fooled me, Wizz and Campbell -- and we are not exactly beginners.

The Draycott is a very interesting example. It was a big barnyard in a single blind tasting over here recently and I wonder if that might be due to heat during shipping. The wine certainly looked much older than a 2003 - it had a definite orange/brown tinge to it. I have a bottle in the cellar that I must open soon to see if it is also obviously "bretty".
EDIT: After having seen Ric's comments I'll certainly be tasting the wine over a period of hours. The wine we tasted single blind had only been poured less than 3 hours before we tasted it, but it already had a strong barnyard aroma and did not loose that over about 90 minutes.

Here is more on Brett. The most interesting bit (for me) is this Brettanomyces has the ability to produce a number of organic compounds which can impact wines. However, the sensory attributes of Brett wines relate not simply to concentration of certain metabolites, but to the ratio of these components and their interactions with the wine matrix. For example, it is possible to have wines with high concentrations of metabolites, including the traditional troublemaker, 4-ethylphenol, and not have a Brett character.

Mike

[Guest]

Thanks Mike

NN