Brett, what is it good for...

....absolutely nothing.

At least if it isn't low level brett in a decent bottle of Burgundy. Tonight I opened an '02 Noton Malbec Reserve that turned out to be a brett bomb. Blah. For some reason my tolerance level for brett is fading fast and clean is becoming my favorite descriptor in a tasting note.

Dan,
I was just having a conversation yesterday about how I miss the Brettanomyces that Beaucastel used to ferociously bring (for me, it has been lacking since the '99.) I don't like it in all of my wines, but (in general) it seems like the further south the region (in Europe) the better the brett tastes with the wine. 'Clean' Jumilla or Puglia? No thanks!

Cheers,
Bill

[David M. Bueker]

I like a little but not a lot. The '05 Thevenet Morgon was so full of brett that I thought I was drinking a Southern Rhone.

so bill, an agressive ad campaign for the wines of puglia and jumilla would go something like: 'we need brett to make good wine - love it or leave it'.

so bill, an agressive ad campaign for the wines of puglia and jumilla would go something like: 'we need brett to make good wine - love it or leave it'.

Exactly! Sicily too.

Cheers,
Bill

Beaucastel seems to have its own unique strain of brett. It is smelly, but doesn't, for me, impact the palate. It's the ones that smell and taste "dirty" that I find harder and harder to swallow. And I checked my list on CT and nary a Jumilla or Puglia in sight. I'll have to try some.

Many suggest that the "brettiness" in Beaucastel is actually the Mourvedre - don't know myself. Personally I've never had a wine I have considered to have too much brett, but I don't seek it out either. I suspect that actually I am pretty insensitive to it. But I do like Beaucastel!

Opened a Loire "hippy wine" (natural wine) that had quite an interesting blast of brett when first opened. It did blow off 90% though. I like a touch of brett funkyness myself.

I love "animal" flavours, whether brett or otherwise induced, within reason. And the same goes for that other "fault" VA. I posted a WTN yesterday on Domaine de Trévallon 1989 which, IMHO, would have been diminished without trace elements of brett and VA.

Brettanomyces aromas are generally a plus as far as I'm concerned. I don't ever recall having a red that was so badly affected by it as to be undrinkable; on the contrary: usually the brett adds some really pleasant rusticity to a wine.

I was quite surprised to learn that the leathery/band-aid aromas that I so adore in many South African reds were caused by a strain of brett.

What I don't like are reds that have been made so politically correct and inoffensive as to smell and taste of nothing; wines that could come from anywhere. No thanks.

Opened a Loire "hippy wine" (natural wine) that had quite an interesting blast of brett when first opened. It did blow off 90% though. I like a touch of brett funkyness myself.

Brian,

I've never heard of or experienced brett "blowing off." Can you explain what happened in the aroma?

Well...maybe I am wrong. When the bottle was first opened, it was quite stinky-barnyardy, funky, etc. With air, this soon became much, much less prominent (although there was an underlying touch of it throughout the evening). It's a low sulfur, organic, "natural" wine, so....

I think it depends on the strain (as Dan alluded to) and the concentrations of the aromatic compounds associated with Brett. Some might criticise Brett affected wines that smell almost solely of shit/Band Aid/sweaty sock because they don't like these aromas to dominate in (certain) wine(s). But certain strains (with products at certain concentrations) can really destroy the palate of a wine - at its worst the palate loses most/all fruit flavours and becomes hollow and metallic. There are enough of these wines around to experience it occassionally (e.g., the Rhone is particularly bad for it; infact the bottle of 2000 Verset Cornas I had last week was affected this way). But, since Brett can grow in bottle (affected by storage temperature for e.g.), not all wines in the same batch will necessarily be affected, which tends to complicate matters.

Many suggest that the "brettiness" in Beaucastel is actually the Mourvedre - don't know myself. Personally I've never had a wine I have considered to have too much brett, but I don't seek it out either. I suspect that actually I am pretty insensitive to it. But I do like Beaucastel!

Someone did an analysis of '89 and '90 Beaucastel, and both had extraordinarily high levels of 4-ethyl-phenol, the marker for brett.

Someone did an analysis of '89 and '90 Beaucastel, and both had extraordinarily high levels of 4-ethyl-phenol, the marker for brett.

I believe it was Charles Collins.

Brettanomyces aromas are generally a plus as far as I'm concerned. I don't ever recall having a red that was so badly affected by it as to be undrinkable; on the contrary: usually the brett adds some really pleasant rusticity to a wine.

Paul, it is certainly possible to be even more accepting of/insensitive to Brett than I, but even so there must come a limit to one's ability to handle Brett-associated flavors. For instance, while I love the Bretty wines of the N. and S. Rhone, I was offered a smell of a '05 Domaine de Peyra wine that smelled distinctly of human excrement. That's not a recipe for enjoyment, even for me.

Mark Lipton

Phew! Well that must have been a distinctly flawed wine in that case. Any chance someone sabotaged the fermenting vat? Oy ...

Not only are there multiple strains of brett, which present in different aromas, but I am pretty sure that some people have much stronger reactions to certain strains than others. It is not the least bit unusual to have someone finding a wine undrinkably bretty, and another person not even detecting that. I have had bottles of '89 Beaucastel that were bretty but I thought good* - others at same dinner said "too bretty to drink" or "what Brett?"
At a Pape Clement /Haut Bailly paired vertical the '88 P-C reeked of raw sewage to me and 2 others, several others thought it didn't show any stink. Then there is the '01 Havens Bourriquot, where I didn't notice any brett and others found terribly bretty. So we have different strains, which different people react differently to. Whew.

* I've had other bottle of '89 Bo that the brett was barely noticable, which I assume saw much colder storage that kept the brett bloom down

Well...maybe I am wrong. When the bottle was first opened, it was quite stinky-barnyardy, funky, etc. With air, this soon became much, much less prominent (although there was an underlying touch of it throughout the evening). It's a low sulfur, organic, "natural" wine, so....

Not wrong, I don't think. It's that "underlying touch" that indicates, to me, the possibility that you simply got used to the brett aroma of the wine. It happens. In fact, that's likely why so many posters like those bretty Rhones

Someone's thesis at Davis was culturing the same wine (Lodi Syrah, if I recall) with a number of different strains of Brett, then having people write down their reactions. One of the wines smelled exactly like old-fashioned Bordeaux, to me anyway, which raises the interesting question of how much 'typical' Old World characteristics rely on 'spoilage' organisms...