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Postmodern Winemaking CL A r K SMIT h Integrated Brett Management (count me in), Brettanomyces management is the central problem facing the making of serious wine. The reason is simple: The focus of I postmodern philosophy is the creation and preservation of beneficial mac- romolecular structure. This structure manifests in wine as colloidal particles sometimes nearly as large as a bacterial cell. The benefits of good structure (pro- fundity, aromatic integration and grace- ful longevity) appear to be lost by sterile filtration despite the fact that no tannin material may be retained by the filter. Our hypothesis is that the action of tight filtration somehow disrupts rather than removes structure. Integrated Brettanomyces Management (henceforth referred to as IBM) advocates another approach that both preserves and takes advantage of the benefits of good wine structure. It utilizes a three-legged approach: 1. Create a nutrient desert 2. Microbial balance 3. Aromatic integration through good structure Microbial activity when properly hus- banded can amplify distinctive terroir characteristics and soulful appeal. On the other hand, wines lacking good structure fail to properly incorporate the influences of microbial activity; the resulting percep- tion of Brettanomyces as a defect has led to draconian control measures that pro- duce wines of less interest. 76 Wines & Vines JUne 2011 t's high time I post my views con- cerning this beast and its handling— as usual somewhat at odds with modern enological thinking. For winemakers interested in bypass- ing sterile filtration when possible highlights • Modern enological practices cause Bret- tanomyces and exacerbate its effects. • Postmodern techniques both assist and require a new approach to Brett management. • To master Brett management is to un- derstand what red wine really is. When these measures become incor- porated into a winery's general protocol, they generally harm the development of its wines. Paradoxically, these wines not only carry Brett less well, they are more sus- ceptible to it, leading to a snowball effect in exactly the wrong direction. Due to its clever survival strategy (see box on page 77), Brett in this environment outlasts or- ganisms whose competition normally con- trols it. Brett is a hospital disease, fostered by the very sanitation measures designed to suppress it. In the recent past, such practices have reached the level of academic dogma, with the consequence that Brettanomy- ces (together with its sexual spore-pro- ducing twin Dekkera) is now classified outright in many quarters as a spoil- age organism. The intrusive aromas of unmanaged Brett include horse sweat, leather, shoe polish, salami, fois gras, truffles, dog doo and (Ralph Kunkee's classic descriptor) "wet dog in a tele- phone booth." Neurological studies in guinea pig brains have shown that sensory inputs as- sociated with important events—e.g. an A- flat played to signal feeding time—result in increased neural mapping for the stimulus. In the same way, wine tasters can become sensitized to aromas of oak, bell pepper, VA and other "defects" so that they no longer experience them as untrained con- sumers do. Nevertheless, only the most zealous of its critics fail to acknowledge "good Brett" at least occasionally. In his hilarious article "Attack of the Brett Nerds," wine importer Kermit Lynch issued a call to reason that unfortunately has been largely ignored.1 Why not simply eradicate this organism and make clean, sterile wines of appealing fruit character? Fresh, unstructured wines such as Rieslings are easily stabilized by modern technological tools (sanitation, fer- mentation with pure yeast strains, tempera- ture control, pH adjustment, maintenance with inert gas and sulfites, and sterile bot- tling). But winemakers often find these tools are best placed aside in the development of fully-evolved, structured wines for which profundity rather than varietal purity is the goal. This discovery is the beginning of the path to postmodernism. A fully evolved Brett strategy completes the journey. In the vineyard, our goal is to maximize reductive vigor. The emergence of 'conventional' wine The modern technological system devel- oped in Germany shortly after World War II brought into being a kind of wine pre- viously unseen in history. Without sterile filtration, the off-dry German wines we regard as "traditional" were impossible to make because they were unstable in the bottle. Such wines, more properly called "con- ventional" wines, did not exist in commerce in the 6,000 years of truly traditional wine- making. Reductive winemaking methods were extremely effective for the produc-