Brett in Burgundy - the red wine premox?

I was just flipping through the latest Burghound report covering red CdB 2017 and it started with a warning that Allen Meadows had never come across so much brett during his tastings. He calls it a " Serious and Growing Problem". He said “I found an increased incidence of Brettanomyces that is clearly not a good trend”.

I must admit I was a bit surprised by this, as I have only very rarely encountered brett in red burgundy wines, let along in red CdB wines, although my sample size is probably pretty small for red CdB (Lafarge, Bouley, Angerville, Bize mainly).

I will not copy his whole reasoning but he seems to link it to global warming, leading to riper fruit with higher pHs and more polyphenols (a potential food source for Brett), creating a perfect environment for Brett to thrive in, this in combination with lower SO2 usage.

All new to me…

Any thoughts?

Lower SO2, reduced new oak (older barrels that havent been properly cleaned , riper fruit.
I think Burghound covered it quite well

While older, inadequately cleaned barrels can certainly harbor brettanomyces, to my understanding brettanomyces comes more often from new oak barrels than from older barrels. This is because so many wineries follow quite strict cleaning programs and normally heavily brett-infected barrels are discarded, while the complex wood sugars of (especially heavily toasted) new barrels make a perfect breeding ground for brett.

Lacking other data, a useful exercise is to take back issues of Burghound or whatever critical publications you read and do a control-F search for the term brett in tasting notes. At this early stage, I think it would be irresponsible of me to present the findings of that exercise, but if you are willing to make the effort- that is the best starting point I can think of for personal monitoring outside of tasting wines at release. I will say this, there is most certainly a trend and while it is not perfectly linear- it is pointing pretty conclusively upward.

Otto, can you explain to me why this would be the case for a heavy toast as opposed to a lighter one? I don’t understand the dynamics or chemistry behind this as I would assume the opposite.

Heavy toasting changes the sugars in oak making them more ‘appealing’ to brett. I think the effect here is pretty slight tho. Note that there are ‘reasonable’ (I put this in quotes because it appears that reason has left us long ago) measures/solutions to brett (I’m excluding velcorin from this, which was effective apparently, but never reasonable). Also, it can be difficult at times to distinguish between reduction and brett…the rule that helps here is reduction gets better with air time (of the wine), where brett gets worse.

Basically what Eric said, but not just changing sugars but instead “creating” sugars as hemicellulose (polysaccharides) and lignin compounds break up to form new sugars (mono- or simple oligosaccharides). The lower the toast, the lower is the amount of these oak-derived sugars (and also the less impact the barrel is going to have on the wine).

I remember reading somewhere how new, unused and heavy-toasted barrels can harbor quite a bit of brett, since the wood can contain brett microbes quite deep into the wood, whereas only the wood surface is toasted (the temperatures need to reach 60 deg. C / 140 F to kill brett) and thus does not get hot enough to eradicate the barrel from brett. Unless winery takes necessary precautions before taking the barrel into use, an unused, pristine barrel can surprisingly turn a wine into a brett bomb.

Are any specific producers being called out? Saying brett is going up without listing specific producers seems useless to me.

I think critics generally tend to shy away from specifically calling out brett, preferring to allude to it with aroma descriptors such as “leathery / funky / wild” etc. It is possible to confuse a number of other things with brett (e.g. poorly seasoned and heavily toasted oak to name just one), and no one wants to call a wine bretty and then see a lab analysis proving the contrary.

But there is a lot of talk about brett being a big problem in 2018 red Burgundies, and I have already tasted a couple that displayed it. And I’m sure Allen—who tasted the 2017 CdB reds a bit later than I did—is right to flag this up as an emerging problem of some importance.

It’s worth noting that another factor in brett management is simply topping barrels.

Marcus, indeed, but still it’s the first time I see it put to paper to clearly to be honest. I hadn’t really seen this as a major problem, so was pretty surprised to read it laid out on one full page - so Allen is clearly considering this as an issue.

Interesting indeed - I don’t ‘play in this arena’ and therefore won’t be tasting many of these, but I’m sure a reviewer like Meadows certainly can distinguish between ‘brett’ and ‘reductive compounds’ at this stage. Could they ‘confuse folks’? Of course - but for a reviewer to make an overall statement as he did, there probably is some issue going on here.

It is true that new oak barrels can contain brett, but more often than not, the problem will be present in older barrels that have ‘not been taken care of’ in greater numbers. The lower use of SO2 certainly can be an issue here as brett thrives in these lower levels versus higher ones, especially as the pH of wines begin to rise.

William - you probably have a better handle on this than most: of the 18s that you tasted, how many were barrel samples versus finished bottle samples? Also, how prevalent is it for producers in Burgundy to a) sterile filter or b) use Velcorin or c) micro filter to try to remove issues?

Cheers.

If a critic shies away from calling out problems in specific wines or wineries, why would anyone pay for their reviews. How can their subscribers rely on their reviews in making purchases. Shouldn’t their first allegiance be to subscribers, not producers.

I am thinking, for example, of how virtually no reviewer called out the problems with the 2004s.

Because, as William made very clear, diagnosing brett by scent alone is not at all a certain thing.

Lots of people found no problem with 2004s, and some people who hated them young are finding some of the same wines fine now. If it were ladybugs, that doesn’t seem like it should have happened. So that seems like another case where declaring the cause of some unpleasant smell or taste in a young wine based solely on tasting was kind of dubious.

How many 2004s have you had lately? Most are not good. And, I have never said the issue is ladybugs and am skeptical that this is the issue. If you want some 2004s, I am happy to sell you some.

He doesnt single out producers, but does single out individual cuvees in his reviews.

Interesting. As a guy (unfortunately) just getting into Burgundy, this makes me hesitate to make further purchases until the trend is better understood. (I’m already very shy about spending any coin on white Burgs.) Not calling out producers here, but by your research do you see any appellations or vineyards that are particularly affected?

And, this is the result of not naming producers. Tainting all of them.

I have to admit it has been handy to have people say “stick with PYCM” and such to avoid premox.

I see no specific trends of any kind just yet- only a sharp increase in the mention of “brett” in tasting notes and sometimes producer evaluations.

Here we get into the realm of statistics and also making guesses about things for which long term prospects are unknown. There is not yet available, to me anyway, anywhere near the population of data I would need to render a statistical analysis on which I would make judgments of any kind.

As such, it would be irresponsible- in my opinion- to call out any producers at this time and specifically label them as problem children for this phenomenon. And that may end up being an appropriate approach in future.

Take premox for example. Due to horrific issues with some 95s, Pernot and Ramonet were early targets for premox concern. But as it turned out, at least for me, the Pernot issue turned out to be a one-off situation while Ramonet ended up being far less trouble than I had feared. I can count on one hand the number of premoxed Ramonets I have opened. And on the other side of the coin, in the mid to late 2000s, Leflaive was widely believed in the marketplace to be pretty much premox free- but then quite suddenly with 2007 and beyond they became one of the most serious offenders. But that was not truly known until a few years ago. Would any of you reading this want to be that guy who told your readers in the late 2000s that Leflaive was completely safe- and then oops?

These things cannot be reliably predicted, and I for one think any critic would be foolish to sound alarm bells too soon without full knowledge of the accuracy of such claims. Allen has done what most critics never do in even talking about premox and brett, among other issues- including write-ups on the 2004 situation- and in the case of brett where there MIGHT be reliable early warning signs, those are indicated in the tasting notes.

There is no magic in the exercise I undertook- I just noted it as something others can do if they would like to track specific data going forward. And while I did rightfully state that I saw no trends as of yet, thinking on it more I realize that freely posting the results of research on proprietary material (in this case- Burghound’s newsletter) for which subscribers pay would not be appropriate in the first place. So I have offered all I can on the subject.

See my post above. False sense of security there. Even now as premox seems to be far less of a problem for some producers, it has become horrific at other addresses (notably Jadot and Leflaive) where before it was not generally a major problem.

Noone can tell you with any certainty that PYCM, or any other producer, is safe. As far as I know, DRC was the only premox-free producer for a long time, and I have seen a troubling number of notes on the 2005 Montrachet which suggest they are no longer immune.

This is a big part of what makes these kinds of things so frustrating. Even once the “cure” is found and implemented- in the unlikely event it proves to be that simple- it will take a good decade longer before we know for sure.