Cayuse wines can be super funky. I’ve found huge bottle variation in wines that I purchased on release and have stored in a wine storage facility since. In one case, a bottle of a Cailloux (I forget the vintage) was so flawed that I dumped it down the drain. A bottle of the same wine only a couple of months later was enjoyable. I usually find some level of brettanomyces, but it’s often low enough that it doesn’t bother me, and I am easily bothered by that. There’s also something else there, though. It was blogged about and discussed years ago.
Within two days, we had the results, posted online and emailed to us. Then we had a follow-up call with a representative at ETS to discuss the results. The evidence was clear. The Cayuse was a flawed wine. It had volatile acidity slightly above the normal sensory threshold but at a level a massive Syrah can support, but the worst result from the chemistry panel was that it had a high pH level, which made it more susceptible to bacterial attack. The most damning result, however, came from the sulfides panel. Published literature and ETS studies say that low levels of dimethyl sulfide can contribute roundness, fruitiness, or complexity; however, at levels greater than 50 ug/L, it may contribute vegetative, cooked cabbage, or sulfide smells to wines. According to the ETS representative, this wine had the highest dimethyl sulfide level he had ever seen (312 ug/L), more than 10 times the normal sensory threshold (17-25 ug/L), which accounts for the canned corn, rotten vegetables, and decomposed greens flavors. And, those dimethyl sulfide levels and resulting unpleasant sensory characteristics will only increase with wine age, according to ETS.
This is based on only one bottle, and the authors are FAR from experts here, but it doesn’t surprise me, and I think it’s worth noting.
These are wines that generally have extremely high pH, and the winemaker is pretty hands-off, so he doesn’t acidify (which could give SO2 some effective antimicrobial properties, which it basically doesn’t have with such high pH), from what I have read. Bottling wines unfiltered with extremely high pH is a recipe for all kinds of things to happen after bottling. So, in addition to possible sulfur compounds, there could be any number of microbial issues, and I’ve seen a couple of different ones in various bottles that I’ve had.
I’ve held on to most of the Cayuse I purchased over several years, because the good bottles can be absolutely great to me. However, I’ve had drain dumpers and lots of conditions in between that and the great bottles, so to me, it’s kind of a crapshoot whenever I open one.
One important point related to all of this: regarding these causes of “funk”, aging will not help. If anything, things get worse. Aged Cayuse can be beautiful, though.