Skunk---the Odor of Ethanethiol

This is the last week of Quality Control and Analysis in Winemaking, the UC Davis online course. For me, this is the last of the five courses so, just a few more days! Last night, Bryan Parker had a chat session and we asked questions regarding the final. One question that was brought up was about the smell of skunk in wine. Bryan said that skunky smell in wine can happen when a bottle is "light struck". He said that it can happen in beers quite often so the remedy for beer was use brown bottles to prevent the interaction of UV light with beer. Bryan also mentioned that during a sensory analysis of wine, if you want to create the skunky smell in wine, just take base wine and put a little of the skunky beer in green bottles into the wine. Skunky wine, no thank you.
However, just to underscore that I got the message, some time during the evening, when I was fast asleep, something penetrated my REM sleep. At first, I didn't understand what it was. Then it occurred to me that it was some kind of smell....ah yes, skunk! Ethanethiol.....CH₃CH₂---SH, just another smell of summer in the air.
January 17, 2012 Errata: In rereading my notes, it appears that the smell of skunk is due to ethanethiol and not methanethiol. I apologize for the confusion.