Brett - bad tides a'rising

I admit it, I hate the taste of wine that has been impacted by brettanomyces spoilage bacteria. I say spoilage because I firmly believe this is a flaw, despite what certain winemakers, terrior-suckers and wine-pundits may have you believe. After experiencing 3 flawed bottles from different areas of the world in the same week, I am not only "afeared" of what is to come in my cellar, but for the wine industry in general. I do not like wine that smells and tastes like wet dog fur dipped in pooh. Just not for me. I believe this is a flaw because, let's face it, most winemakers would prefer to avoid it impacting their wine (maybe Ch. Beaucastel being an exception). Yet they make excuses or claim it is supposed to be there when it does occur and often refuse to take the admittedly draconian measures necessary to remove it from their winery. Syrah and certain Bordeaux varietals (Cab Franc, Malbec) seem to be particularly susceptible to contamination, although this is my observation and I have no empirical data to support this and have not talked to winemakers or profs from UCD regarding my unscientific survey. Here is what I think about brett:

1. If you rail against overuse of oak, oak chips, vacuum alcohol removal, must watering, sugar addition, overripe grapes and many of the old and modern winemaking techniques used to manipulate the grape, you should also rail against brett contamination. It is not part of the grape nor the yeast used to ferment the sugar to alcohol. Rather brett is a SPOILAGE BACTERIA that is introduced to the grape, must or finished wine somewhere along the process that alters the wine downstream of the bottling process by chewing on residual "stuff" left behind after bottling. It may be natural, but it is not part of the fermentation process in much the same way that oak, oak chips, de-alcing and the other things I note are natural but not part of the fermentation process. It is also not controllable by the winemaker once the wine is bottled, which makes it that much more nefarious.

2. Winemakers, pundits/wine writers and the trade are complicit in allowing brett to flourish. Clearly it must be difficult to remove brett from wine. But those involved in this industry have made it their jobs to convince wine drinkers that the smell and taste of dog hair dipped in shit is okay, even desirable, in their red wines. Horsepuckey. The same thing has happened with TCA. The trade has thrown up their hands and said well it is too prevalent and there is not anything we can do about it, plus, most people don't taste it anyway. I would argue that most people just are not educated as to what a flawed wine is and will drink it to get hammered because even flawed, the wine tastes better than the MD20-20 they drink most of the time. Further, the well-being of the trade depend on people drinking wine and if people rejected the wines with brett, which I believe is somewhere in the neighborhood of 25% of all red wine made today, they would be without a job. The French try to hide behind the word "terrior" and guys like Reynolds, Tanzer and Sir Bob use "smoked meat, leather or game" instead of calling it what it is, brett-impacted flawed wine. I guess it is understandable they want to preserve their livelihoods, but doesn't my money mean something as well?

3. With all the well-meaning but over-reaching vintners attempting to use biodynamic, organic and other "natural" grape growing and winemaking procedures, brett is going to get worse, probably much worse, before it gets better. I read an article from a vintner who tries to utilize these procedures but does not advertise or certify because he understands that sometimes you have to stomp on a wine to make an excellent, stable, drinkable product. That sounds wise to me. But now we have every half-trained, hair-brained, sometimes well-intentioned grower and winemaker touting their use of non-interventionalist, organic or biodynamic procedures and the fact of the matter is, most of these are either unqualified, untrained or unwilling to do the hard, hard, hard work to make sure that this lack of intervention does not turn into spoiled wine after a couple of years in the bottle. I am convinced that in a few years, collector drinkers like me will be opening up spoiled bottle after spoiled bottle, contaminated with brett and other spoilage organisms that flourished because the grower refused to sensibly use sulfur or copper or other "interventionalist" means to ensure grape health and the vintner refused to add fining agents, sulfite or mechanical purification procedures to ensure a stable product in the bottle. Mark my words, this is going to blow up big, sort of like "ensuring physiological maturity" has blown up in California where wine after wine, wonderful to drink in its just released youth, begins to show baked, cooked and pruned notes after a couple of years in the bottle.

4. How can animal fur dipped in shit taste good or even be good for you to drink? Look, brett is most often caused by a spoilage organism growing in a bottle after it has been sitting around for some time. When I drink a flawed bottle like the recent Mantakata Providence 2002 I drank a week ago, my stomach actually hurts from either this bad bacteria or the sulfur comnpound it leaves behind. How can this be good for you, despite what the vintners in the Rhone have been claiming for years?

5. I rarely see this flaw in wines from Washington state, Italy, Germany, Austria or South America. However, wines from Australia, California, the Rhone, Bordeaux, South Africa and New Zealand seem to show more and more contaminated bottles. I am not sure why this is the case. I read somewhere that certain grapes like Syrah tend to grow brett on the grapes skins while in the vineyard and this makes it really hard to remove during vinification. Okay, so if this is true, then appropriate fining, filtration and preservative (sulfur) levels must be employed to ensure the bacteria does not ruin bottle after bottle. Why the regions I mention seem to avoid contamination is beyond me, but I find myself more and more patronizing these areas and avoiding the offenders. I suggest others follow suit in order to put heat on the winemakers to get their houses in order.

Join me in railing against brettanomyces contamination in wine. Together we can clean up the industry.