Does brett blow off?

About 4 days ago I opened a bottle of 2000 Chevillon Bourgogne Passetoutgrains. It was pretty good, but it smelled like it had a bad case of the shits. I’m pretty brett tolerant, and this was pushing my limit.

I poured off half the bottle into a half-bottle, let it sit in the fridge. Tonight I returned to it, and the shit-stink has totally vanished. It’s a beautiful, fragrant, red-fruited wine.

Can this happen with the taint from a brett infection? Or rather, was this just a case of some sulfurous molecules that had formed in a reducing environment oxidizing away?

Brett may subside, but I haven’t run into the scenario of it completely disappearing after a day. May have been some other reaction in your case.

Simple answer is no.

Here is a good thread I started a while back to key on this & similar things being perceived, or not in wine before & after air.

Oxidation/TCA/Brett does not "blow off" - WINE TALK - WineBerserkers" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Are you sure this was Brett? That’s not a descriptor I usually use for Brett. Sounds more bacterial, or like you added reductive, sulfurous but then, I wasn’t there.

The thing is some of these things do blow off, but Brett does not.

I have a funny feeling the fridge may have helped. Hot tends to cause a bloom of brett, the fridge may have caused it to shut down.

The shit smell could have been any kind of sulfur compound. Without sufficient nutrition, oxygen, and nitrogen, any remaining yeast will use available sulfur to make hydrogen sulfide. Plus, some yeasts are more prone to form sulfides than are others. Racking, topping up, filtering, and bottling allow the incorporation of oxygen and help to prevent sulfide formation. But the addition of elemental sulfur, either in the vineyard or to the wine, can do just the opposite.

They stink but do not “blow off” with aeration and they aren’t easily oxidized. They simply form disulfides or heavier, less volatile, sulfur compounds for which we have higher sensory thresholds.

On the other hand, the lighter sulfides can precipitate with a copper penny. (Little copper in US pennies these days, so use a piece of wire or something.)

Some people don’t think that a little stink is a flaw and in fact, sulfur compounds aren’t always unpleasant - the yeasty or bread-like aromas from aging on lees that one might detect in chardonnay or sparkling wine is also a reductive scent, and the petrol scent of riesling is another, and what I think people sometimes call “mineral” notes in highly acidic whites may be yet another.

Brett is different.

First, it’s all around. So if your winery isn’t clean, you probably have bretty wines. This was characteristic of many French, Italian, and Spanish wines in prior years.

Second, with a little oxygen and nutrients, Brettanomyces of some strain or another can grow using the alcohol in the wine as a source of carbon, some amino acids in the wine for nitrogen, and even some of the sugars in the wood of the barrels, particularly the toasted woods. Thus the wine needs to be able to eat up, or use any available oxygen, so as to deprive the Brett of any ability to grow. Also, it grows quickly at temperatures above 60 degrees F, so keeping the wine cold is important.

Still, higher pH wines (lower acidity), higher sugar levels, and in some cases, reduced use of sulfur (“natural wine”), all contribute to the growth of brett. So even if your winery is clean, your winemaking style may contribute to brettiness in your wine.

I think you had something other than brett. Probably brett too.

Every experience I’ve had with Brett has found it getting worse as more air hits the wine. I agree that this was likely so2 reduction.

Reduction, yes, maybe. Sulfides, mercaptans. SO2, no. Sulfites don’t cause aromas anything like this.

This also could be from older, funky, bacterial infested oak. The fruit will have opened up & maybe covered the stinky barrel aromas a bit.

Not that many choices, really. It’s certainly one of these.

Oxidation/TCA/Brett does not "blow off" - WINE TALK - WineBerserkers" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Who is Brett? Is this the appropriate forum for this?

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Yes, so I’m no parkerfile & I’m stingy with my points.

Yeah, this wasn’t plain ol’ H2S or other simple sulfur smell: it was, literally, shit. Smelt more like indole than anything else.

Was there any pressure/bubbles when you first opened the bottle, and was it cloudy?

Barrels can get pretty funky, but don’t usually literally smell like shit.

Nope. No pressure, no petillant, no cloudiness. (I’ve seen all of those in severely bacterial wines. A 2005 V. Girardin Savigny Serpentiers was a particularly nasty bottle, with all three.)

Just poop.

I know it sounds odd, but I wouldn’t have posted it if I understood it. If I thought it was inorganic sulfur, I woulda dropped a penny in it. I was sure on Day 1 that it was some sort of microbial issue, but now, I don’t know.

Ditto.

Colin

I appreciate the website Rob referred us to and here is another that includes TCA and VA:

http://www.greenfaucet.com/wine.../its-not-you-its-me-how-to-dump-a-wine" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

If I may, this isn’t quite the right way to look at it. When we talk about brett “blooming” in the bottle, that means that the conditions become favorable for the brettanomyces yeast to become active, producing the contaminant compounds we detect as brett. The principle condition, other than presence of brett in the bottle, and something for them to metabolize, is higher temperature (higher than cellar temps). Once the contaminant compounds are in the wine, nothing you do will change that (heat or cold). My answer to the original question would be essentially no, these are compounds which are large enough and not very volatile, so they don’t tend to dissipate from the liquid very fast. The wine would surely evaporate completely before the brett did

Like others have suggested, it seem more likely in this case that you had some sulfur compounds (or something else) that smelled nasty, but changed with exposure to oxygen. that doesn’t happen to brett byproducts, they are pretty stable.

Quick question - did you allow the wine to warm up again to room temp after taking it out of the fridge? Cooler drinking temps will certainly hold things back aromatically.

That said, brett does not blow off, as others have said. It very well may exist at levels just around your threshhold area, and therefore one whiff might make you smell poop and then, as the temp changes, the next whiff may not reveal the same aromas . . .

I’ve smelled barrels that were crazy bad, only to come back to them days later, preparing to smell the same stuff, and been surprised that the aromas have subsided . . .

Interesting phenomenon for sure.

Cheers!

So if Brett is a yeast, and it blooms in the bottle, it may still be alive, no? But what if it has died? Is the stink trapped in the bottle? When it gets air, why wouldn’t the smell blow off if the yeast is now dead and longer producing? If the yeast is still alive, does that change the story?

I have had bottles that had brett (it was tested) and the sh*t smell, only to have the smell blow off. Perhaps the smell was from something else, but I certainly don’t think we understand yeast and all its compounds fully.

Funny that something dead would smell less than something alive. Then again, the French have proven that over time.

Agreed. Brett is a high H2S producer, and often they go hand in hand, so there may have been low levels of Brettiness that produced a lot of H2S upon opening, and when THAT blew off, maybe the Brett was at a low level so as not to be perceived, or it was cold, as Larry suggested.
Once the 4-EP and 4-EG are formed, they do not go away.
And yes, Brett can survive in bottle. Whether they are still alive or not when you open a bottle would not be known unless you own a lot of expensive lab equipment. But although Brett is a very fastidious yeast (meaning they have some very specific nutrition requirements), they can also survive on VERY low sugar levels, unlike Sacch. A Brett population of 10^7can be supported on a hexose level as low as 0.01%!

And, these are non-fermentable sugars (hexose, pentose etc.). Which means, even in a wine with zero fermentable sugars, the little bastards (brett, not my kids) can still thrive.