Surprised this has not been posted here yet. The Facebook posts created by Adam Lee and others have been quite fun to read.
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Iām a bit skeptical that if mouse is bacterial in nature that it can ever truly āresolveā itself (by interacting withā¦what?) if you just exercise enough patience. I know a friend who works for an importer, and one of their (really good!) producers decided that the natural-ish but clean sparkling wine he makes every year would be done sans-soufre this particular vintage because the fruit was in such good condition. It arrived in March or so incredibly mousy, and little has changed since despite him opening a bottle every 2-3 months. It tastes like corn chips with an endless frito finish.
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Yep, there is zero scientific proof that it goes away - but if your main business is selling natural wines, as the author of the article is, well, you qant folks to believe so . . .
Cheers
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I drink a little bit of natural wine, I do like it. Been lucky enough to never experience mouse yet.
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Corn chips/Fritos is so much more of an accurate description of the taste/smell than āmousyāā¦Iāve never smelled a āmouseā, but Iām pretty sure they donāt smell like Fritos. I also understand the āvomitā descriptorāsometimes reminds me specifically of ābeer vomitā (or, even better, āFritos nā Beer vomitā.
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Just another reason to not buy a ānaturalā wine. Seems like thereās little upside and plenty of downside.
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I drink and cellar a lot of so called ānatural wineā. Been doing so for six years now. Why? Because there is a ton of good wine in this category.
But Iāve yet to see mousey issues disappear over time in those bottles that had issues early on. Longest between tasting them has been around three years. Would be suprised if it was suddenly gone after more time than thatā¦
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According to Jamie Goodeās book on wine flaws, about 30% of the population cannot perceive mousiness, so you may well fall in that group. I suspect that figure also goes a long way to explaining the tolearance for mousiness in the low sulfur world.
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I donāt mind mousiness in natty wines if thatās what Iām smelling when I smell dank furiness. I kinda like that.
What I canāt stand personally is what I refer to as that ācorn chip fermenting inside a chickenās buttā aromatic. I find it awful and impossible to get around. Itās not prevalent in all natural wines by any means, but some producers have it in spades, like Scholium wines. Friends of mine really love those, but I just canāt get past that profile.
Once you notice it, itās really one of the worst wine faults there is. I have had a corked wine (more than just a hint of it) with such great quality that I somehow could enjoy the wine, shed a tear about how beautiful it would have been had it not been corked. Mouse there and itās game over, hideous.
Iām convinced itās not something that goes away. Have a few bottles of a 2011 of a producer that you have to chug faster then ā¦ (insert the name of your friend that gets through that first beer within a minute or two), or the mouse is there. Opened the last bottle in September - tannins are close to gone, fruits starting to fading, yet the mouse is as fast as when I first bought the bottles.
another observation is that the better minimal intervention producers/growers donāt seem to have issues with mousiness.
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I drink a lot of ānaturalā wines and whenever I come across mouse it tastes like the smell of bile to me - really hard to get around once it comes out. Most bottles I have are fine, and maybe once every two months Iāll open something thatās mousey (and typically a cheaper bottle). That being said, I also find that in the $20-30 wine Iām much more likely to find something that I really enjoy in the natural camp than in the more conventional camp, so putting up with an off bottle every once in a while is fine.
I am lucky enough to call John McCarroll a friend, I enjoy the hell out of his company and he has sold our wine in New York for a decade. His article is, unfortunately, apologist drivel. This missive on mouse (from another old friend, Jeff Segal, owner of the DC pioneer natural wine shop Domestique) is a much better take on it:
Probably the most salient idea in Jeffās piece is his assertion that the natural winemakers who have learned their terroir no longer have mouse, regardless of sulfur usage. Thatās probably a better take than blaming the importers for not holding the wine long enough.
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Thereās tons of upside. Is there downside? Yes. But no more downside than just picking a random bottle of āconventionalā wine. I work with retailers, wine bars and restaurants I trust, and the hit ratio is very high.
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The distinguishing thing about mousiness is that you only experience it retronasally ā only when you swallow. You wonāt get it sniffing the wine or swirling it your mouth. Thatās because it has no aroma at the pH of wine, but after itās in your mouth, the pH changes and you get the smell and taste as the wine goes down. Yucck!
I wouldnāt describe it as āfurriness.ā It really does remind me of a dirty mouse or gerbil cage. I can see the smell of bile, too, though that hadnāt occurred to me. Goode says it can also come across as something like the smell of crackers, but thatās far too kind/positive in my experience (unless the word has a different sense in British English).
Iām happy to say I have no idea what ācorn chip fermenting inside a chickenās buttā smells like. And you have my sympathy if you do.
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More discussion here for those who havenāt seen it:
Nearly any other wine fault this article could have been written on I could have seen some sort of upside to, unless it was TCA. Unfortunately apologetics for mousiness are absolute nonsense and this article read in a very strange, twisting way.
Mouse taint is truly the worst thing Iāve ever had in my mouth, and thereās no possible way someone can convince me that itās an enhancing characteristic of wine in any capacity.
I agree with OP, the Facebook discourse has been entertaining to say the least.
Iād like examples of producers that started mousy and it went away. Aside from random small sample sizes.
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Sorry I went off on your IG page, Charlie. I may be more ticked off after reading that stupid article than you are. What a bunch of (mouse) crap.
Yes, that article is total garbage. Interview people who sell natural wines so they can make a completely unsupported claim that mousiness goes away. If anything, my experience has been that it intensifies over the first few years in the cellar. Iāve seen that happen enough times to make me stop buying certain producers completely, and to avoid any wine that tastes the least bit mousy on release. I have never seen it go away, despite having put quite a few natural wines away to age.
Oh, and itās the importersā fault for not holding the wines for a year before selling! 
Yes, the article seemed like a mix of some genuinely researched portions with dubious self-serving anecdotal remarks from folks in the natural wine camp.