How many times have we tried a natural wine and it stank of poop? When we mention this, the somm or retailer or rep responsible for us putting this in our mouth replies “it’s a natural wine” and shrugs his or her shoulders.
I want to definitively state here and give everyone reading this the license and encouragement to stare those hucksters in the eye and tell them that they are full of crap that stinks just as bad as the wine they are selling.
First, some science. That poopy smell is the result of a yeast called Brettanomyces. Now it is true that winemakers can use sterile filtration which is basically a really small screen that filters out Brettanomyces and other large molecules. The problem with this technique is that it can change the character of the wine. So using sterile filtration will result in wine that has no poopy smell. But the converse (not A not B for those who don’t recall high school logic class) that if you do NOT use sterile filtration you WILL have poopy wine is NOT true.
As pointed out by noted wine consultant and technologist Clark Smith in his well written piece “Integrated Brettanomyces Management,” http://www.postmodernwinemaking.com/ibm one can have Brettanomyces in wine without the wine reeking of poop. Without getting into the science of it all, many winemakers who do NOT use sterile filtration do not have portfolios of wines that all reek of poop. A small amount of Brett can result in an earthy smell which some consider a positive in the overall context of the wine’s aromatics.
Is eliminating poopy wine smells trivial? No - it’s one of the hardest things about making wine. Brettanomyces is a nasty little bugger and even if you pay fastidious attention to the cleanliness of your cellar, you can still have some Brett and have it get in the wine. Smith points out that talented winemakers create wines where even if Brett exists, it does not take over and kill the aromatics.
Who is ultimately at fault for all of this? Well some blame must go to the winemakers themselves and the hucksters who not only sell this crap but try to apologize for it. And please let’s be clear. There is not an importer or retailer alive who has not sold a poopy red here and there unless they only sell wines that undergo sterile filtration. But there sure are some red wine producers that don’t know how to manage Brett and are consistently making awful poopy wines and apologizing for their lousy winemaking technique only encourages them to make more lousy wine.
Actually, the poop smell isn't Brett. Brett can smell like a wet horse blanket or a farmyard, but it doesn't smell like poop. That poop smell is almost certainly the result of some other microbiological contamination, or possibly an overly "reductive" wine making process wherein the yeast didn't get enough oxygen at some point. IMHO, natural wines are mostly a stupid fad driven by consumer neuroses (i.e. "I only want 'natural' things in my body."), which have little scientific merit. Too much SO2 can also be a bad thing, so the trend itself isn't necessarily bad, but there are too many horrible dog-poo swill bottles of "natural wine" that taste horrible. Chalk it up to the same trend that made people abhor MSG, even though there's no scientific basis for it (this phobia actually stemmed from systematic racism against Chinese immigrants).
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