Foul plum wine! Brettanomyces?

[Ehren]

A few weeks ago, I painstakingly picked and destoned a pile of wild plums. I crushed them and added campden tabs (1/gal), pectic enzyme, and nutrient to the must. 24 hours later I added sugar and EC1118.

Fermentation seemed to be proceeding normally, and the wine smelled fine after 5 days. After 8 days, it was ready to go into the secondary... When I took a sample to taste however, all I could think was "What the #$%! is that smell?!".

It had a very odd odor that I couldn't quite place, so I went looking for probably causes. I ran across someone talking about Brettanomyces (which I had not had the pleasure to experience) making the wine smell and taste like Band-aids. I went back to my sample with that in mind; "Yep... Band-aids". Of course I can't be sure Bretts are the cause of this, but it it definitely cause by some sort of contaminant.

Does anyone have any suggestions about how to avoid this in the future? I think there may have been wild yeasts already inside the flesh of the larger chunks of plum, so the campden tabs could not penetrate to kill them (?). Otherwise, my sterilization techniques have always worked thus far.

Is there any other cause, other than Bretts, that I should be looking at?

Thanks!
-Ehren

 

[Julie]

Are you positive about this? Brett's is more commonly known to be found in barrel aged red wines, chardonnay and sauvignon blanc

 

[Ehren]

No, I'm not positive at all. I know very little about Brett. I am sure there were numerous wild yeasts on the fruit that I picked, so it could really be anything. From what I read, Brett. can give off the Band-aid/hospital smell, so I based my guess on that alone.

Now that I think about it, I'm sure there are many other yeasts that would produce chemicals with that aroma, so it may not be Brett., but it IS infected with something nasty!

 

[UBB]

Terrible year for plums out this way. We have approx 120 plum trees planted and we got less then a gallon bucket of fruit. I've never experienced what you're describing though.

 

[robie]

EC 1118 is so strong I doubt wild yeast is your problem. They will overwhelm and kill most any yeast.
What is the SG now?
What is the temperature of the wine? Of the room?
What is your recipe?

Are you sure the smell is not a rotten egg smell?

 

[Ehren]

The starting SG was 1.1, and it when it went in the secondary, it was 1.04.
The room temp is around 68F, and the wine is about 72F. The recipe was only plums, sugar, pectic enz. and nutrient. I have used this setup for several successful batches of wine this year, but this is the first batch of plum.

The smell is definitely not rotten egg. It is a very odd smell, that I couldn't really identify until I read about "band-aid odor". Now I am sure that is what the smell is. It is a very offputting antiseptic smell like walking into a hospital.