Brett, clean cellars and terroir 3 September 2007

James Farquharson, red winemaker at Boschendal, tosses some more thoughts
into the Great Brettanomyces Debate

Just this Thursday past (the 30^th of August if memory serves) I was one of a clutch of Franschhoek vignerons lucky enough to present a sort of two minute show-and-tell of a wine made in our cellars to a gaggle of 20 of South Africa’s top wine journalists. Crikey, thinks I at the time, I didn’t know we had that many and besides, who pays all these people? After the actual tasting held at Reuben’s Restaurant we were treated to a fine meal by the same. To my surprise and initial distress I noticed that the winemakers present had been allocated to specific tables, three to a table, and that the journos were allowed to sit wherever they may please. You may understand my initial mental state when I tell you that I was closeted with winemakers Marc Kent of Boekenhoutskloof and Jocelyn Wilson of La Bri (easy enough to cope with I suppose), and the journalists who chose to join us were Michael Fridjhon, Tim James and Christian Eedes. It was clear I’d be witness to some interesting repartee.

In order not to make a complete buffoon of myself I kept my trap shut and my hands off the fine grog for the first half an hour or so, while certain members of our distinguished company reduced themselves to gossiping about the merits of other, internationally known wine writers and name-dropped with neither a hint of shame nor irony. But when the subject of high-priced SA wines came on to the agenda and this in turn turned to the subject of Brettanomyces infection (those of you who know, know WHY), I could no longer restrain myself and blurted out that there will never be a resolution to the Great Brett Debate whilst the French refuse to understand that the notion of terroir does not begin in their cellars. Eedes roared and Fridjhon quite correctly damned me and even the poor equine specimen I had parked outside. 

Now, one’s experiences must necessarily inform one’s opinions and while I cannot refute the accuracy of Mr Fridjhon’s reaction to my cheeky comment I would like to know in just how many French cellars he has been privileged to actually work in the last decade or so. Not that it matters. I’ve worked in four. Two of them were spotless and of those one ought to retain its St Emilion Grand Premier Cru Classé status once the chaps who decide this kind of thing sort themselves out. The other two were far from clean and tidy and I can tell you with confidence that the owners of both were less than welcoming of my suggestions that I clean up around their pressing area in preparation for the impending harvest.

But again, Brett does not seem to be all that picky about a cellar’s general hygiene as the high gloss and high cost of some clearly tainted wines will reflect. It should be known that, in general, spunky labels come from spunky cellars where the issue of hygiene is never in question. Yet, despite their obvious adherence to good cleanliness wines are made, at top dollar, and horribly tainted. Allow me the indiscretion of referring to one that I, and 19 of my winemaking peers were in no doubt about; the highly rated 1994 Opus One (the Mondavi-Rothschild venture in California). Left to warm up to a little over room temperature, it was so awfully exposed that many of us refused to go further than the merest investigatory sniff.

So, where to next with the ubiquitous Brett? (Yes, I do mean ubiquitous). Perhaps a little hint of it isn’t such a bad thing. And I would easily agree with Mr Fridjhon when he says that so long as it isn’t obvious, nor significantly alters the intrinsic nature of the wine and that it may even add to the complexity of a wine, it cannot be all bad. Mr Eedes, I believe, does not agree and I’m certain that there are many others who would also adopt that stance.  All things in balance, I say. The fact of the matter is that there are some filthy French cellars which make fine wines, just as there are spotless ones. There are spotless South African cellars which make not so great wines and there maybe some not so spotless ones that don’t. Whatever.

Brettanomyces spoilage causes great economic losses to cellars worldwide every year. The formation of volatile phenolics by this hemascomycete yeast (found in the same class as Candida spp) lead to flavours described as mousy, medicinal, wet wool and horse sweat amongst others (reminds me of old-style SA shiraz). When we understand that the little understood Dekkera bruxellensis a.k.a Brettanomyces grows on the bloom of just about any grape, we know that it comes from the vineyard, is happiest in your barrel or fermentation vessel and has little to do with a cellar’s hygiene. It is facultatively anaerobic and generally tolerant of ethanol in high concentrations; therefore the medium of wine is its favoured playground. We also know that once it’s in your cellar you might as well burn the place down and flog your barrels to the garden centre, for all your efforts at removing its pernicious presence will be to little avail.

And this is where I must contradict myself: the difficulty of controlling Brettanomyces is perhaps why we, or the French, may refer to it as an effect of a particular terroir and live in the hope that it favours our wines with added complexity rather than damning them with taint…. And so, doubtless it shall continue for the foreseeable future.