I opened a wine tonight, 06 Domaine Philippe & Vincent Jaboulet Crozes-Hermitage Nouvelère, that was very bretty smelling out of the gate. Got lots of urine aroma. But with some extended time in the glass the barnyard aroma blew off for the most part. Still kind of primal but without the heavy urine note. Not seeing any mention of brett in CT TN’s but that doesn’t necessarily mean it isn’t there.
So, does/can brett blow off or am I experiencing something else?
No. The aromatic compounds associated with brett are not particularly volatile (not unlike TCA). And they are quite stable. So if you think you smell brett, and the next day it’s gone, it was probably something else. Roy Piper probably has some data on this from his recent lab results.
How about a conjecture? Brett is “quite stable” (don’t really know what that means) so you open a bottle and the nose/taste is full of brett. Then to preserve it, do you put it in the fridge, where the particles won’t evaporate as quickly and it seems like the brett is gone?
I, for one, have seen the diminishing brett phenomenon. But once I get a stinky bretty bottle, I’m not inclined to keep it. I must train myself to leave this open for a few days. At least then it might be OK for cooking.
By the way, brett to me is a fault. It’s not naturally in the grape juice, is it? It’s introduced in the winery or barrels and is an unnatural addition to “clean” wine. While I respect those tasters with brett tolerance, (I personally don’t mind a little), my partner is much more sensitive and so I automatically skip any wines with even hints of brett.
If I come across another bretty bottle, I will try this experiment and report back.
Various sulfur compounds are responsible for many funky aromas and they’re not always brett but are often described as such, so one needs to be sure one is talking about brett, which reveals itself in many ways. And don’t forget, there are different forms of brett. Anyhow, many of the sulfur compounds don’t really “blow off” but they combine with oxygen and form heavier molecules that are less volatile and less apparent. Depending on what they are, they might also re-emerge later if you re-cork the wine and put it away for a bit.
I think it is true however, that a wine that seems “bretty”, whether indeed it is or not, can sometimes improve greatly after a day of being open.
I find that the my perception of Brett often blows off and greatly decreases with air. Since 4EPand 4EG are not volatile, I think this is often due to a decrease in CO2 and other volatile compounds that tend to make the 4EP and 4EG more noticeable.
I do not think brett blows off, I think the aromas of the wine emerge and better mask the brett.
Everyone knows that lately I love to throw my money down the drain analyzing brett in CdPs in the nearby lab. Well, tomorrow I will be having a slew of em. Assuming many are bretty, I plan to have the same bottle of bretty wine analyzed 6 hours apart and we will see if the brett level actually changes with time. Then we will have our answer.
Thanks for doing the tests and reporting them! It is great to see people answering the questions with science, rather than opinion/observations. Of course, there are lots of useful and interesting opinions and observations here, which is part of the fun…
I also do not think that brett blows off, though I’ve experienced wines where it is less noticeable on the second day after the bottle being corked for a day. I’ve also attributed it to the wine aromatics coming out more the second day (at least on younger wines), and possibly my becoming more accustomed to the 4EP/4EG smells in the wine and not finding them as bothersome the second day.
I also agree with Roy, Ken and others who do not believe that brett ‘blows off’. That said, I think a couple of things need to be considered:
Could ‘saturation levels’ exist whereby you become ‘immune’ to the aromas after awhile (same thing happens with TCA)
I’ve experienced barrels where wines were extremely bretty and then I’ve tried the wines the following month and the brett was not noticable - could have something to do with threshold levels?!?!
I’ll be very curious to see the results you come up with, Roy . . .
Maybe I should clarify that when I say brett sometimes ‘blows off’ what I mean is that it’s aromas fade. It is not to suggest that the compounds causing it somehow disappear from the wine. The effect is the important aspect after all.