Poll: Does Brettanomyces help or hurt fine wine?

[Eboracum]

Some winemakers, critics, and drinkers believe that Brettanomyces is a flaw and should be minimized or eliminated in wine, because they find its aroma offensive (cow pats, farmyard, tractor-filled hay-barn, stable or sweaty saddle) and it can mask other aromas. Some believe it is traditional, beneficial, or even representative of the wine's terroir. Others believe in small doses it can add a positiive complexity to wine.

Do you think that the presence of Brettanomyces can improve a fine wine?

[daz]

It's about as desirable as low level TCA taint.

[Eboracum]

It's about as desirable as low level TCA taint.

Daz, I respect your view if you genuinely dislike brett related flavours but I think that your analogy with TCA is a poor one. I know nobody who likes the taste of TCA; indeed corkiness has been universally disliked and condemned as a wine fault ever since the cork was introduced.

Alternatives 2 and 3 are in the poll because many people, at least over here, genuinely like "animal" notes (usually attributed to brett) provided that do not dominate.

[Craig(NZ)]

I am no winemaker but it was Ben Glatzear that once said on that other forum that and i paraphrase, but something close to "brett exists in some level in every wine from the most rank rhone to the purest alsacian riesling"

So perhaps then it is just a matter of tolerance

Personally

Some wines that are so called infected with brett I enjoy very much.
Some wines that are I don't
Some wines that are seem to vary bottle to bottle which to me is the greatest argument against brett. For example the famous 1995 Howard Park Cabernet. The first bottle I drank was fine if not that inspiring. The second bottle was undrinkable.

To quote Geoff Kelly

"So returning to the brett issue, firstly, many Waiheke winemakers are certainly striving to get on top of this fragrant but vexatious yeast, by both rigorous barrel heat-sterilising procedures, in the case of the keenest at every emptying, and moving towards temperature-controlled cool barrel storage. The irony in this brett affair is that the wine-loving public couldn't give a toss, most people naturally tending to like the fragrant, savoury, and exceedingly food-friendly (even food-mimicking) characters low-level brett introduces to wine. This particularly applies to people who are familiar with and appreciative of French wine. All too often in private tastings, it is only the smart-arses who draw attention to the presence of brett, partly no doubt to display their superior / up-to-the-moment learning. C'est la vie."

I have to agree. I have hardly ever been to a formal tasting where someone doesn't utter the word "Brett" and the entire table start searching for a fault which may or may not be there which until then had passed them by. Sometimes I think it is just time to get on with life and drink some wine.

[Wizz]

I'm not that sensitive to brett, but when it is there at high enough levels to bother me it is horrible. Embarrassingly my wife is much more sensitive to it than me, and when we have a Friday night quaffer we sometimes have conversations that go like:

Wife: "This is terrible"
Wizz: "What are you talking about, its fine"
Wife: [puts glass down never to return to it]
Wizz: [half hour later once the brett has bloomed a bit more] "This is terrible"

I've seen what Craig says - brett calls get made on wines which aren't bretty.

[DJ]

I'm not that sensitive to brett, but when it is there at high enough levels to bother me it is horrible. Embarrassingly my wife is much more sensitive to it than me, and when we have a Friday night quaffer we sometimes have conversations that go like:

Wife: "This is terrible"
Wizz: "What are you talking about, its fine"
Wife: [puts glass down never to return to it]
Wizz: [half hour later once the brett has bloomed a bit more] "This is terrible"

I've seen what Craig says - brett calls get made on wines which aren't bretty.

Ah don't you love being in a house where you are the wine nut but she would have the better palate if she could be bothered. My better half has been known to refer to me as being her wine memory. Not to mention she is very sensitive to TCA so if there is doubt pass to her to test - the older generation hasn't learnt in 15 years of our marriage to get her to test the questionable bottles with her

[Bick]

Ah don't you love being in a house where you are the wine nut but she would have the better palate if she could be bothered.

Haha - indeed - my wifey is the same - she has a very sensitive palate to faults and invariably spots tca or brett or mild oxidation before I do - she doesn't know what's wrong, but she knows something's not right, a mile away.

I'm quite sensitive to brett, though - I can let it go oftentimes, but in other wines it provides too intrusive a character for me.

[roughred]

Brett becomes an issue when it is distractingly apparent in a wine...bet then so to does acidity, phenolics, fruit sweetness, vegetal notes and just about every other character one can find in a glass of wine.

Agree with others re the brett 'buzz' that spreads like wildfire at a tasting as soon as someone utters the word. Most are yanking their tallywhackers. Too often anything displaying regionally distinctive/earthy/savoury/leathery/charcuterie/bottle aged characters are tarred with the brett brush when it's not necesarily the case. Becomes an issue for me when the characteristic coarse drying sensation is evident on the palate.

[Craig(NZ)]

Most are yanking their tallywhackers.

I wanna use that term today at work in a meeting

To me once it gets to metallic burnt rubber bands and rotting crap covered vegetation im out, however low level i don't detect it as a fault.

BTW when is the next screwcaps thread due to start?

[Gavin Trott]

On a lighter note re bretty wines

I was at a tasting once where someone said

'That wine smells like a mouse has climbed inside a horse's bum, and died there! ... But its alright, someone put a band aid over it.'

Wish I'd said it, absolutely hilarious.

Oh, and the wine did smell a bit like that! Just a little bretty that one.

.

[Craig(NZ)]

There is no doubt some just are super faulty but I think those are pretty rare.

I remember a get together with family in Brisbane with a wine from a queensland winery called dingo creek. i have photos of uneducted folk drinking it with the fingers pinching their noses it smelt of a box of rubber bands - awful crap

I can also remember a pinot from margrain estate whacking me between the eyes with that real bad mousey metallic flavour when at winenz a couple of years back.

Some just mug you with it.

[orpheus]

I ended up describing it as a flaw "at any detectable level", but I equivocated. This, I felt, was an extreme position to take. On the other hand, I didn't feel particularly inclined to concede that it could improve a wine. So really, I think I'm sitting on the fence.

[Peter Schlesinger]

I think my wife must know your wife Wizz. Kaf's sense of what's wrong with a red is scary. I also have a higher tolerance to brett than to TCA but Kaf will projectile spit them all. All too often I default to the 'I'm sure it's just my imagination and if I leave it to breathe for a few more minutes it will all go away' position, particularly with reds in which I have an emotional investment. The default wifely response is the 'you delusional idiot - how many times are you going to continue to do this - just pour this crap away and get me something decent to drink - NOW' look. It's always Groundhog Day revisited although Bill Murray did it better.

[ticklenow1]

I think my wife must know your wife Wizz. Kaf's sense of what's wrong with a red is scary. I also have a higher tolerance to brett than to TCA but Kaf will projectile spit them all. All too often I default to the 'I'm sure it's just my imagination and if I leave it to breathe for a few more minutes it will all go away' position, particularly with reds in which I have an emotional investment. The default wifely response is the 'you delusional idiot - how many times are you going to continue to do this - just pour this crap away and get me something decent to drink - NOW' look. It's always Groundhog Day revisited although Bill Murray did it better.

Ditto. Insert Janine for Kaf and I'd have thought that I wrote that post. Spot on!

[Billy Bolonski]

I'm not a Brett Nazi. But if you asked me if I would like it in my wine or not, I would say not.

Don't think it 'helps' any wine, but minute amounts aren't going to necessarily ruin a wine either.

[Craig(NZ)]

Don't think it 'helps' any wine, but minute amounts aren't going to necessarily ruin a wine either.

agree

I ended up describing it as a flaw "at any detectable level", but I equivocated. This, I felt, was an extreme position to take. On the other hand, I didn't feel particularly inclined to concede that it could improve a wine. So really, I think I'm sitting on the fence.

agree

[Bick]

BTW when is the next screwcaps thread due to start?

Yeah !! Corks are BAD, lets have our monthly reactionary rant.

[Eboracum]

This poll was devised by Brady Daniels and he posted it initially on two different wine boards (the mostly British Wine Pages and mostly American Wine Berserkers) to see if there are any culturally different attitudes towards brett. With Brady’s permission and encouragement, I then posted it on the Auswine Board. The poll has been out three or four days longer on the other boards than here but the pattern was already discernible after a couple of days in both places. There have been 71 votes in the UK, 84 in the US and 23 here and the percentages are at present as follows.

Can the presence of brett be beneficial to wine? (Wine Pages = WP, Wine Berserkers = WB, Auswine = AW)

Brett, at any detectable level, is a flaw in wine – WP 20%, WB 42%, AW 39%
A small, non-dominant, amount of brett can improve a wine – WP 63%, WB 50%, AW 61%
Wine has always had brett, and its presence can reflect terroir – WP 17%, WB 8%, AW 0%

The differences weren't as dramatic as we expected, with a majority on all three boards supporting a benefit of brett in some way. However, American and Australian wine lovers (WB and AW proxies) were twice as likely to reject any detectable brett as a flaw as their British counterparts (via Wine Pages). My guess is that the percentage regarding brett as a flaw would be lower than in the UK on an equivalent French, Spanish or Italian board.

I will wait a day or so more before reporting the AW results to the other two boards in case there is any change here.

[odyssey]

For the record I'm not afraid of a little bit of Brett on the right occasion and in the right grape varieties (shiraz/grenache/CNdP OK.... pinot/burgundy, no).

However maybe my understanding of terroir (or Brett, for that matter) isn't quite right, but I'm curious as to how a fungus whose presence is a typically a reflection of the sterilisation regime of your equipment and barrells can reflect the terroir of the vineyard (3rd poll option).

If the poll option read "its presence can reflect the style of the region or winery" then I would understand, but I don't understand how terroir/soil/land/climate, etc. factors into the equation? Is climate a major factor?

[Thommo]

Had a 2002 Tyrrell's Vat 8 Shiraz Cabernet over the weekend that had a decent whack of bandaids, saddle and horse shit, but in saying that it wasn't entirely unpleasant... gave it an interesting rustic complexity (and to add to the general theme emerging here, my wife didn't like it at all). I have read a few TNs on this wine and vintage (admittedly a few years old now) and noticed that none mentioned brett taint at all. Is it simply that brett is expected in Hunter Shiraz and not worth commenting on, or can brett develop in the bottle to varying degrees depending on storage/other externals?

Interesting to note the old world forum users' tolerance/enjoyment of brett versus the new world forums (fora?) users' general dislike of it.

[Eboracum]

However maybe my understanding of terroir (or Brett, for that matter) isn't quite right, but I'm curious as to how a fungus whose presence is a typically a reflection of the sterilisation regime of your equipment and barrells can reflect the terroir of the vineyard (3rd poll option).

I think that the argument goes something like this.

"Brett yeasts come into the winery initially on the skins of the grapes. Although they can then multiply in the cellar and in places like old wine barrels, they are basically a product of the terroir."

With many wine-makers in Europe (how about Australia?) making a virtue of "natural" techniques, low intervention, indigenous yeasts, etc., the minimisation of brett becomes more difficult and some of the more militant adepts of the techniques will not want to pursue that. Organic and bio-dynamic techniques, and their certification, concern principally the production of grapes not the work in the winery, but there is a move to recommend and certify certain wine-making practices which are unlikely to go in the direction of easing the elimination of brett.

I would add that there are certain wine regions in the Old World (Châteauneuf du Pape and Bandol spring to mind) where an element of "animal" flavours, whether brett in origin or not, is considered by most wine-lovers as a desirable part of the wines' normal character. Some esteemed Bordeaux and Loire Cabernet franc also show flavour traces which the brett paranoid immediately reject.

[odyssey]

I would add that there are certain wine regions in the Old World (Châteauneuf du Pape and Bandol spring to mind) where an element of "animal" flavours, whether brett in origin or not, is considered by most wine-lovers as a desirable part of the wines' normal character.

Absolutely, but the question was specifically about Brett, not terroir-driven animal flavours of non-brett origin.

It is, as far as I know, seen everywhere around the world. There are numerous wineries here in Australia that combat it and some that welcome it. I welcome being corrected by a microbiologist on this, just my limited understanding is that, unlike botrytis for example, Brettanomyces simple presence on the grape skins is little reflection on the terroir other than possibly a very basic "is this a mild to warm wine region".

[Eboracum]

I would add that there are certain wine regions in the Old World (Châteauneuf du Pape and Bandol spring to mind) where an element of "animal" flavours, whether brett in origin or not, is considered by most wine-lovers as a desirable part of the wines' normal character.

Absolutely, but the question was specifically about Brett, not terroir-driven animal flavours of non-brett origin.

The matter of animal flavours, grape varieies and terroir is interesting and controversial.

Just taking the two areas, I mentioned -

Bandol - some people argues that the leather notes so typical of Bandol are a property of Mourvèdre magnified by the terroir but, in the discussion of this poll on the other boards, certain people maintained that it was indeed caused by a mild strain of brett.

Châteauneuf du Pape - Many connoisseurs consider that CndP Château de Beaucastel 1990 is an outstandingly great CndP but it has been proved to be brett affected.

I'm not scientifically competent to make a judgement on the brett v terroir/grape variety origin of an animal flavour, so I limit myself to asking whether or not I like the flavours in question. The only time I had Beaucastel 90, that bottle was close to my brett intolerance threshold and I didn't consider it a great wine, but other bottles could be different.

[odyssey]

Either way its an interesting poll and discussion, particularly to see the absolute polarity in the comments between acceptance and vehemant rejection, so - nice post.

[dingozegan]

Interesting results from the polls on different boards, Eboracum. I am actually surprised the result for "a small, non-dominant" Brett-influence was so high here. Aussie winemakers are possibly the most paranoid in the world when it comes to Brett. Of course, this attitude is not necessarily reflected in the wine drinking population, but the results for Brett being a flaw do seem to reflect the attitude.

I believe I am reasonably sensitive to Brett (I say believe because I haven't had all the wines I've tasted Brett-characters in tested for 4EP/4EG/IA) but can cope with a fairly big hit of it. It does get too much, though, when barnyard or Band-Aid completely dominate every other character, let alone when the palate becomes metallic and the aromas are half dead. As others have said, it's a matter of balance.

For the record I'm not afraid of a little bit of Brett on the right occasion and in the right grape varieties (shiraz/grenache/CNdP OK.... pinot/burgundy, no).

That's interesting because Pinot/Burgundy is probably the one grape variety/region where I have sometimes positively sought out Brett-related characters! Interested to know why it's a problem in Pinot/Burgundy for you - is it because you feel Pinot is too delicate to handle Brett or another reason?

I have hardly ever been to a formal tasting where someone doesn't utter the word "Brett" and the entire table start searching for a fault which may or may not be there which until then had passed them by. Sometimes I think it is just time to get on with life and drink some wine.

I've seen what Craig says - brett calls get made on wines which aren't bretty.

But surely the (potential) problem there is that tasters are attributing flavours (e.g. shit-like aromas) to a specific winemaking issue (Brett) when the flavours may be due to other things? And whether people "start searching for a fault" surely depends on whether people consider it a fault or not?

someone said 'That wine smells like a mouse has climbed inside a horse's bum, and died there! ... But its alright, someone put a band aid over it.'

Classic!