The Sotheby's Wine Encyclopedia 5th Edition

A couple of years ago, our Greek friends gave us this book for Christmas. It is a huge tome written by Tom Stevenson and I found some information on Wikipedia. It weighs in at 5 pounds 11 ounces, so it's really not a book you want to read at night in bed and it is required reading for the Master of Wine, Master Sommelier and Cape Wine Master examinations.
I picked it up a few weeks ago and began thumbing through it and stopped at the comprehensive Tastes and Aromas section which contained a listing of aromas and their chemistry beginning with acacia and ending with yeast-complexed. A while back, I put together my own list of Post-Bottling Aroma Defects, which now seems very incomplete. But what caught my eye was the description under Wet Dog or Wet Wool which went:
          These aromas are heat-generated volatile sulphur faults involving the           retro-Michael reaction of methional, which is thermally unstable and           evolves rapidly into acrolein and methanethiol, which are responsible           for the so-called wet-dog and wet-wool aromas and a stronger cooked-           cauliflower smell.
My husband, in a former life was an analytical chemist so I asked him about the retro-Michael reaction. He said "Blah, blah, blah", so today, I'm doing the research on what exactly is a retro-Michael reaction. Stay tuned since I'm being pressured to get dressed for working in our vineyard. We are still putting in our ground anchors.