I’ve been reading Jamie Goode’s new book, Faultless: Understanding Faults in Wine (U of Calif Press 2018). It’s a terrific, pithy reference, with chapters on 13 common wine faults, including ladybug and smoke taints. It’s much more accessible than his last book, the much more technical I Taste Red.
Has anyone else read it? I’ve just skimmed it, but I’ve learned a couple of interesting things:
That weird taste/smell you often get in low/no-sulfur wines (he calls it “mousiness” because it’s a little like the smell of a mouse cage) cannot be perceived by about a third of the population. That probably explains why some of us have such averse reactions to some low-sulfur wines that are highly touted by natural wine fans. (In a blind tasting of Cahors I hosted this week, the no-added-sulfur wine stood out like a sore thumb to several of us.)
This aspect is unusual, he explains, in that it is perceived only retronasally – at the back – so you don’t smell it when you swirl or first sip. It sort of kicks you in the butt after sipping, even after you’ve swallowed. I hadn’t thought about that, but that is my experience. Goode says that the delay can be so long that, in large tastings, you may not experience the mousiness until after you’ve tasted another wine and you can be unsure which wine had the fault.
The book explains to me why brettanomyces can express itself in such varied ways. (What do latex bandage and barnyard have in common?) He says it may depend on when the brett yeast gets active – e.g., between primary and secondary fermentation, in barrel, or in bottle – and what it therefore has to feed on. It’s a very hardy little yeast and can survive on many different nutrients, depending on what’s available. Hence, its byproducts are different.
It covers it in his chapter on excessive greenness. He doesn’t take a position on 2004 Burgundy, but he says that a non-European ladybug, which carries much, more more of that nasty scent, emerged in Europe around 2002 – a suggestive fact.
On the other hand, he says the taint does not dissipate with time, and many people have found '04 Burgundies they intensely disliked early on are now quite pleasant. That suggests that, for those wines, bugs weren’t the cause.
Using shaking sorting tables has helped in other areas where the bugs have been found on grapes, he says.
There are many different strains of Brettanomyces, too. Someone at Davis did a tasting of a Syrah from Woodbridge re-fermented with different strains of Brett and the resulting wines were fascinating. One of them took my back to all of the Bordeaux wines I grew up on…
John, re the comment on LB taint not dissipating, Ontario experienced a terrible plague with the Asian lady beetle for a few years in the early '00’s. 2001 was especially brutal, with many wineries experiencing a “cap” of LB’S on the top of the fermenters. Most with experience here believe the taint does decline but not in a straight line - more like a wave, coming & going, while gradually getting weaker over time.
Jamie has been here once or twice as far as I know, but not sure if he had a chance to taste many of these vintages.
Yup, John. Got the book and just skimmed it, but it looks like a very good read.
“Retronasally”?? Don’t use such big words, John. I ain’t a rocket scientist, you know??
That’s often times where I pick up mousiness/hantavirus/wet dog fur/etc. I’ll swallow the wine & things seem OK. Then, all of a sudden,
this foul character wells up in the back of the aftertaste. I’ve always wondered why. Now I know and even
have a high-falutin’ term for it.
Tom
RE: mousiness, we were at Lo-Fi in Los Alamos last summer and they had made a Grenache? that got mousey so they didn’t sell it but kept bottles of it around at the tasting room for some mouse-taint educational material. They poured us some and it’s really a shame because I think before I swallowed it was the best wine in their (quite appealing) lineup but afterward it was so foul it gave me the heebie-jeebies. It was super weird too because it would hit your mouth with delicious crunchy red fruit and spice, then you’d swallow or spit, there’d be a second or two where your palate cleared, then WHAM! this wave of fur and poop-soaked sawdust just took over your mouth.
I thought natural wines have been a big thing for such a long time everybody know already mousiness.
However, I’d like to point out that natural wines can have all kinds of weird tastes and smells, but (exactly as you describe) you really can’t smell mousiness - in that sense your “weird taste/smell you often get in low/no-sulfur wines” is a bit misleading.
There are also people who know that mousiness appears in the aftertaste, but still don’t know what it is. I’ve met people who describe a wine as “very mousy” where in fact it shows no mousiness at all, but instead shows elevated levels of VA and shows this coarse, grippy vinegary effect in the throat upon swallowing.
But I’ve noticed that some people really are impervious to this particular fault. Here in Finland we have some wine importers who import heavily mousy natural wines and if questioned, they don’t seem to notice anything off in the aftertaste.
But I’m interested whether that Cahors you describe was so disagreeable because of mousiness or because of the so-called “natty” style of the wine? As I’m somewhat partial to the wines at the more “natural” end of the spectrum, I’ve written tons (well, dozens) of positive TNs about wines I’m at the moment swirling in the mouth and only when the mousiness strikes me in the aftertaste I cross everything out and just write “AVOID - heavily mousy”.
Otto, as you have decent experience with Natural wines, I’d be curious as to your description of a certain class of flavors that I’ve encountered in some Natural wines. Sometimes you encounter a wine that is somewhat “cidery” or like a lambic ale, but not necessarily VA where it smells like paint thinner or vinegar or whatever. It still smells mostly fine, but on the palate there’s just some sort of… fermentation-y flavor, that isn’t all the way into unpleasantness or kombucha, and isn’t quite reduction. Is there a name for that?
I know exactly what you speak of, but I’m not entirely sure what makes the wines feel so “cidery”. Because this thing can happen in reds, whites, oranges - bubbly or completely still - it must be some common bug that is encountered everywhere in the world.
My prime suspect is some strain of Brettanomyces. It’s not the common strain, because that’s the classic funky aroma one encounters not only in many natural wines but also in many farmhouse ciders of Bretagne and Normandy. Or - as John above described - it might be the same Brett strain but only from fresher, earlier-picked grapes. I’m basing this only because I’ve never described a natural wine aroma as “cidery” unless it was a high-acidity white, light red or a fresh, acid-driven orange wine.
My own mystery aroma is the distinctive aroma of Chinotto zest - probably best described as the unimitable aroma of Campari. I guess that must be Brett at work again, because so many wines that have this distinctive Campari note in their nose tend to show some bretty flavors as well. I’d just love to know what this particular aroma compound is and where it comes from!
Having had more of these wines in recent years, I understand a comment of my friend Claude Kolm (sometime Berserker), who said a few years back that, instead of accentuating the uniqueness of a wine, very low sulfur levels often obliterates the signs of terroir. To me, many of these taste alike, regardless of where they’re from. I guess if you’re in the 33% who are not sensitive to this, you get a fresher wine. But it’s not working for me. (Not that all low-sulfur wines have this, but it’s increasingly common, particularly if you frequent natural-wine-loving stores and restaurants.)
This really doesn’t describe accurately natural wines. I’m pretty sensitive to THP (and nowadays I regularly taste a quick sip of natural wine just to detect whether it is mousy or not) and a great deal of natural wines certainly aren’t mousy. I fully agree that many non-interventionist wines really don’t taste of the variety or have the sense of place, but instead taste of the process (or the lack of it) but it doesn’t have anything to do with mousiness. A mousy wine is basically as undrinkable as a corked wine to me, but they (fortunately) are quite rare among natural wines. It certainly seems to be increasingly common to some extent, but nevertheless it seems like a fault encountered quite seldom.
I associate it with a really astringent/stalky “green” note, that doesn’t have the weight of tannin but is far less tolerable. I find a lot of 04 Burgundy undrinkable, and some 2011s too. There does seem to be varying sensitivity from person to person.
Acetic acid is not a “weird” smell to me. It’s quite familiar. Same with ethyl acetate. I’ve been tasting wine pretty seriously for 35 years, and I had never encountered mousiness until the last several years, so I found/find it weird. Only recently did I come on the term for it on Goode’s blog.
As I said in the original post, it was illuminating to me that this is one of those things that a large proportion of people can’t detect at any level. On top of that, there are lots of people who aren’t very good at describing their sensory experience in terms that correlate to accepted terms.
The wine – a Simon Bussey “Polichinel” - Vielles Vignes - Vin de France – was a very nice wine until I got some mousiness at the back end. No other complaints, and this mousiness wasn’t particularly strong. Still, I don’t like it. (Technically this isn’t a Cahors because it has less than 75% malbec, but it is grown inside the appellation.)
I don’t think we disagree. I didn’t say that all natural wines are the same; I said many share this mousiness, which masks other qualities.
I agree that there are often other markers of this style of winemaking, and they sometimes seem to dominate the impression of the wine more than the fruit character. That’s kind of ironic, since that’s what happens with industrial-scale winemaking and people who try to force their wines into a Parker mold.
Bryan, LB taint is like Peanuts, rancid peanuts with some chalk & green pea. Like TCA, individual perception varies. I unfortunately am high on the scale for this particular fault.
As a fun fact, I’m also quite sensitive (not super sensitive though) to TCA, but I’m fine with wines others perceive as being wildly bretty.
Would be a useful sub-forum. The “Taint trader” forum - You trade your bretty wines for my LB tainted wines.
FYI, Goode has bullet points for each fault, one of which is whether it’s always a fault if detectable. Brett is not in that category. Nor is greenness, whatever the source (and he puts ladybugs in with underripe fruit).
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