KPB
Posts: 4670
Joined: 11/25/2012
From: Ithaca, New York
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Same for me with this form of Brett! Perhaps he and I are just more aware of this particular Brett character. I’m also a TCA “super taster,” and pick that up when some people don’t notice it at all.
The concept of grossing sawdust or wood chips into high end wine is kind of bizarre. Sure, for a gallon of Gallo “hearty burgundy”. But people making higher quality wine generally don’t do that sort of manipulation. You actually do see megapurple in higher end California wines from producers trying to consistently hit that very ripe, sweet character spot that the market favors, but more often they get what they are after by harvesting a bit late or extracting a bit more than you might expect, or blending in something sort of juice that turned out to be a bit thick and sludgy.
So for higher end bottles, I really wouldn’t be betting that anyone is encountering neutral oak plus sawdust.
Bretty wines, though, are ubiquitous. Brett is a family of yeasts, and in fact imparts a very enjoyable spicy/grassy character if you get the right strain, and don’t let it get out of hand. On bottling SO2 kills the yeast cells. You can also kill Brett with a product they extract from certain strains of algae.
The reason this issue of Brett is more of a problem lately centers on the popular trend towards natural wines and minimal use of sulfur or other additives. Brett (and TCA) can both occur in the bottle/cork. After all, these are living things, and they grow. Warmer shipping and storage is a factor too: the shipping change isn’t fully air conditioned and so as the climate warms, the bottles reaching us have seen more heat between winery cellar door and consumer.
I agree that with neutral oak, wineries looking for more of an oak character might be frustrated that they aren’t getting those flavors and aromas. But I think the more common answer is to buy some new oak that expresses toasted almonds and vanilla and crème caramel kinds of things, and then to blend some of that with your neutral oak juice to get the mix you want.
So Brett slips past all of this, and you have to expect we will see more of it if the minimal intervention fad remains in force. There are people who claim to get migraines from wines that have SO2 in them (I myself am more at risk of migraine from histamines, also a fermentation product, but seen frequently on orange wines and other natural ones, or on wines still in active fermentation — I’ve learned the painful way to spit every drop if I’m offered a taste from a wine that is still actively working!)
Summary: there are a ton of ways to end up with a troubled bottle of wine. Brett is a biggie as is TCA, but both come in many strains and with Brett, the annoying thing is that low doses really add a lot of complexity to a wine that might otherwise have been a bit dull. But that plays against climate change and the global preference for “natural” wines… and conversely, handfuls of wood chunks or sawdust are not likely to show up in expensive wines. It just isn’t done.
_____________________________
Ken Birman
The Professor of Brettology
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