I don’t know that I understand the question. There was nothing about it that made me think of shellac either then or now that you ask but I don’t know what specifically you are probing at.
Trying to answer the question without knowing exactly what you are looking at there was nothing visually or in the smell that seemed off at all. Even when tasting it seemed fine until the bitterness appeared, I didn’t note any odd mouth feel and the weight was in line with expectations.
The bitterness as noted before appeared after the normal finish and was quite persistent. I can’t relate the bitterness to anything in memory. The persistence resembled a horrible experience with a hot sauce I had once. Most hot sauces seem to have a kick of heat and then die away. This one seemed to latch onto the tongue and net let go. Milk helped a little but didn’t alleviate it, only thing one could do was wait for it to finally dissipate. While the hot sauce pain lasted longer than the bitterness in the wine, the sensation was the same as it lasted way longer than anything I have experienced in a wine before and I was actively looking for something to wash it away without success.
if the flaw is after the finish it is most likely some type of bacterial spoilage similar to what i mentioned earlier. it occurs after the finish as a result of the wine interacting with saliva and therefore changing the ph causing the mixture to become volatile. these types of flaws are not detectable on the nose like brett.
Going with bitter seed tannins extracted due to a continued high temperature post dryness (no more sugar at all). So think of the ferment having finished, and now you have a hot alcoholic environment extracting the bitterness out of the seeds.
Does this fit into the bottle variation that is apparent from the cellar tracker notes on the wine I tried and from Brandon’s separate experience where he says there is no reported issues on cellar tracker for the wine he tasted? I would assume seed tannin would have impacted the entire batch unless there is another mechanism involved as well.
2009 was a funny year in Oregon as i recall. Most people waited for pHs to rise and ended up with high alc. But if you picked before the pH rose then maybe your acid level would exacerbate the tannins, esp if you went for whole clusters.
Sometimes brett does give a feeling of astringency.
I can see bad oak barrel use resulting in tannic astringency but this case seems to be over the top.
Sometimes people add oenological tannins and overuse can lead to serious astringency.
![[wink.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/04707e6a7bbb03e0153e349d8a9270d30e1e9525.gif "wink"){kind=small}