|
Brett - a good thing?
July 17, 2003
Patrick Matthews
17 July 2003
Brettanomyces - chiefly known as a notorious cause of spoilt and faulty wines - should not necessarily be condemned, an industry tasting was told this week.
The comment was made as wine experts and technologists assessed some of the world's most acclaimed French, Australian and Californian wines in a London blind tasting intended to investigate the wild yeast Brettanomyces.
The tasting was organised by Sam Harrop, a New Zealand-born wine technologist with Marks and Spencer, the UK food and fashion chain.
Harrop thinks 'brett' need not be all bad. He told the tasters, who included four Masters of Wine, that while it's important only to sell wines that are stable and correct, 'I think we should embrace brett because it adds another dimension and makes wine more diverse.'
The wines, all Syrah or Syrah blends, included Penfolds 1990 Grange, Jaboulet's 1996 Hermitage, Henschke 1996 Hill of Grace and Chave 1997 Hermitage.
Harrop quoted a leading New World winemaker who considered Brett 'can help a wine mature'. He also said some Californian producers blend in a little brett-affected wine, after stablising it with filtering. But uncontrolled, he acknowledged, brett can be destructive unless restrained by high acidity, rigorous hygiene and sufficient sulphur dioxide.
Tasters 'tuned in' before the tasting with samples spiked with the two keynote brett by-products, 4-ethyl phenol, which has farmyard smells, and the clove-like 4-ethyl guaicol. There was also a red Corbières in which Brettanomyces was in full bloom.
Harrop said he personally preferred this to a sample of the same wine in which the brett had been controlled with fining and filtration, though the untreated bottle would be unacceptably risky for a retailer.
In the event a majority of tasters were unconvinced, giving the top scores to Hardy's Eileen Hardy 1998 and marking down the Northern Rhone wines. There were those, however, who, like Harrop voted for the brett-affected styles.
'It's all about balance between these more earthy brett characters and the fruit,' he said. 'Everyone uses this term "Garrigue" (the earthy, spicy character of typical South of France terroir) but a lot of it comes from the volatile phenols.'
He predicted that with current winemaking fashions, bret is here to stay. 'Non-filtration, extended maceration, high Ph, creates a template that can be absolutely perfect for brett growth, and I think we're going to see a lot more work on it.'
|
Register on decanter.com absolutely free for news alerts delivered direct to your email inbox, and our fortnightly newsletter with advance notice of what’s coming up in Decanter magazine, offers, competitions and more.
PLUS registration is a one-stop shop for the Decanter magazine Archive and Decanter Fine Wine Tracker. |
Search for similar news stories
Back to index
|
