Thanks. If they have been around sine 2002, why have the only vintages impacted by LBT (or whatever is causing the taint) been 2004 and 2011. Not denying the taint, just wondering about the cause.
My point was that you described it as “weird taste/smell” but you can’t smell mousiness in wine - at least unless you don’t do something to bring the wine’s pH up to 7.
No, not really. But mousiness really isn’t to blame - it is just one small thing among a plethora of different things that homogenize natural wines. On the contrary, many times wines that have been mousy have been very lovely, distinctive and even true to the variety and region - only to turn undrinkable on the aftertaste.
I think the characteristics that homogenize wines from distinctive expressions of variety and region into this vague “natty” style of wine are anything but mousiness.
I had an interesting interaction about this EXACT thing recently, where the person pouring mentioned the “minimal intervention allowing the terroir to shine through” when in actual fact it erased any varietal character or sense of place just as badly as overoaking can, like Otto mentioned. I guess it shows terroir in that whatever microbes were on the grapes at harvest were allowed to do their thing and that is truly what the “place” would dictate, but I’m not sure that’s what most people mean when they talk about terroir or varietal character.
In my experience, like yours I think, mousy wines tend to taste “as expected” until you swallow them which, like you say, is quite different from the “natty” style we discuss above.
This is an interesting post for me to read. I actually just finished reading Flawless and one of the reasons I did was because I was curious about the origin of what I generally call a “real cider” note in wines. I went to college in the West Country of England and had a lot of ciders there (especially scrumpy) that had a very characteristic funky apple note to them that I have also seen in some wines and always thought was an indicator of oxidation, I think because it reminded me a little of old apple cores and because I generally only noticed it in older wines. I have only ever noticed this in red wines, especially older Bordeaux, but also some Burgundy, Rioja, Priorat, and a few younger reds from here in Virginia.
Am I mischaracterizing this, do you think? Is the “real cider” note I’m getting actually Brett?
Since it’s not one of the four or five tastes humans can detect, I assume it is actually an aroma. Perhaps the cells that are sensitive to it are at the back of the sinuses. It’s sort of an exaggerated form of the experience you have when you gurgle a wine and swallow – a much intense sense of the flavors than you get sniffing.
Anyone around here know any sensory anatomy?
vvv this vvv
I haven’t read the Goode book in question, so I don’t know what he has written on the subject. However, how the thing works is that THP (the primary compound behind mousiness) is non-volatile in acid evironment, probably bound up with another molecule. However, around pH 7 and higher the molecule becomes free and turns volatile, i.e. one can smell it.
This is why a you can’t smell it from the glass - all the molecules are bound and non-volatile - and you really can’t taste it - since the wine is still low in pH (around 3-4) in your mouth. However, once you swallow the wine, the minuscule amount of wine that coats your mouth starts to go up in pH because of the saliva. Slowly the THP molecules become volatile and suddenly a wine that might’ve been pure and delicious moments ago turns disgusting and unclean. You “taste” it as the molecules rise up in your nose “retronasally”, from the back of your mouth.
So yes, you actually smell it, but you just can’t smell it in the wine. If you want to smell mousiness, you have to do something to the wine to jack up its pH up to 7. Probably the easiest way to do is to put a drop or two of wine on the back of your palm and rub it there. The skin turns the pH of the thin film of wine quickly up to 7 and you can smell the mousiness there.
You really have to pinpoint which aroma you are talking about. There are two prevalent cidery notes both in ciders and in wines that are a result of oxidation:
The oxidation of alcohol into acetaldehyde: the sharp and tangy green apple note that lends the very distinctive character to Fino Sherry and Vin Jaune. Boosts the sharp green apple notes in ciders.
The oxidation of flavor compounds and other compounds: the typical bruised apple and apple core aroma of old whites, very aged reds, Tawny Port and oxidative ciders. This is probably the note you have in mind?
However, the “cidery” note I was talking is a very distinctive, funky and natural aroma that has nothing to do with oxidation, but instead is this aroma and flavor that gives a very fresh, appley cider character to many natural wines. For example I just had a natural orange wine a few days ago (Trapl Karpatenschiefer Grüner Veltliner 2017) that didn’t show any oxidative characteristics, but still felt very “appley” and “cidery” in the most classic natural wine way as possible. I have a strong feeling it’s just Brett or some other prevalent microbe.
Otto - You drive me nuts. Can’t you find a better way to share the vast knowledge you have?
First you quarreled with me saying mousiness is a weird smell because,as you note, natural wines have lots of weird things, including VA. Then when I said this is not like VA, which is much more common in my experience across different kinds of wines, you said this mousiness is not like VA because you can’t smell mousiness. Now you admit that you can smell it, just at the back. Which is what I said at the beginning!
The info about the impact of pH is fascinating. The rest of this is quibbling to no end.
Sorry, I guess not. I’m much better at it face-to-face than in internet! ![[truce.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/d/d33e712b50d5efc2425bf219c404fbdb7ed0ba50.gif "truce"){kind=small}
First you quarreled with me saying mousiness is a weird smell because,as you note, natural wines have lots of weird things, including VA. Then when I said this is not like VA, which is much more common in my experience across different kinds of wines, you said this mousiness is not like VA because you can’t smell mousiness. Now you admit that you can smell it, just at the back. Which is what I said at the beginning!
The key point here is that I really don’t like when people say or write “mousy smell”, because in probably 99% of the cases there is no mousy smell. When tasting the wine you technically smell the compound, yes, but if it happens retronasally, your brain doesn’t think you’ve smelled something, but it instead is re-wired as a taste of the wine (the same thing happens with all the flavor compounds, yet we say we taste the wine, not smell the wine, when the process happens in our mouths). People should be wary when talking about “mousy smell” because people who don’t know anything about the subject will pick up the words and use them in the wrong context. I’ve heard people saying how a wine smells very mousy whereas it had a lot of brett / cooked aromatics / unclean fruit / reduction / you name it.
Of course there must be a fella who asks “but who cares?”
My answer is: “me, for one.”
Technical accuracy is a virtue and science rocks.
And I was being scientifically precise by specifying that this is technically not a taste.
1 Like
Thanks, Otto…that makes ultimate sense. Even us non-rocket scientists can understand that explanation.
Tom
Insisting that a tomato is a fruit is also scientifically precise, but that doesn’t mean that tomatoes belong in a fruit salad. If you can smell it when you sniff the wine in the glass, then whatever you are smelling isn’t mousiness, it is something else. While mousiness is technically an olfactory flaw, it only presents itself at the point where smell means taste in common parlance.
But Otto was saying that he was being strictly scientific and suggesting I was not. I reserve the right to be as nitpicking as the next guy.
I don’t necessarily recommend this, but if you want to know, crush a lady bug between your fingers. Just like learning the smell of formic acid from crushing an ant.
You don’t even need to crush them. It’s a compound they release as a defense mechanism, so you can easily get it on you when handling them. I certainly did a lot as a kid plucking them off plants. Letting them climb onto you might not stress them out, though.
1 Like
I am of the mind that these cidery notes prevalent in natural wines, specifically, are actually a combination of things. The acetaldehyde mentioned here, but also additional acids created by VA and LAB which are given a little more room to play when SO2 adds are low, especially as the pH climbs above 3.5. We make a number of varietal piquettes, and all show various facets of these notes associated with wild ales or ciders, primarily because with the water add, the pH can get pretty high for where we would normally comfortably ferment. Since we add some wine back before bottling anyway, we have started adding it at press so it doesn’t spend any time in the tank in the “danger zone.”
There are some in the natural wine would who would argue that some amount of these flaws ARE a part of terroir if their precursors are present on sound fruit in the vineyard, in the same way that many would claim you can’t fully capture terroir without only native yeast for fermentation. I even have a friend who goes as far as saying mouse is terroir+vintage specific. I don’t feel this way myself, as I do think in large enough quantities, any of these compounds can mask terroir and variety, but it’s a fun and interesting conversation nonetheless.
And regarding THP/mouse and non-responders, I think the science is still out, but in my opinion it is actually low saliva pH and not a lack of sensory ability that causes some people to not experience it. Some mouths just don’t have the chemistry to volatilize THP!