Once you notice it, it’s 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 it’s game over, hideous.
I’m convinced it’s not something that goes away. Have a few bottles of a 2011 of a producer that you have to chug faster then … (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 don’t seem to have issues with mousiness.
I drink a lot of ‘natural’ 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 I’ll open something that’s mousey (and typically a cheaper bottle). That being said, I also find that in the $20-30 wine I’m 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 Jeff’s piece is his assertion that the natural winemakers who have learned their terroir no longer have mouse, regardless of sulfur usage. That’s probably a better take than blaming the importers for not holding the wine long enough.
There’s tons of upside. Is there downside? Yes. But no more downside than just picking a random bottle of ‘conventional’ wine. I work with retailers, wine bars and restaurants I trust, and the hit ratio is very high.
The distinguishing thing about mousiness is that you only experience it retronasally – only when you swallow. You won’t get it sniffing the wine or swirling it your mouth. That’s because it has no aroma at the pH of wine, but after it’s in your mouth, the pH changes and you get the smell and taste as the wine goes down. Yucck!
I wouldn’t describe it as “furriness.” It really does remind me of a dirty mouse or gerbil cage. I can see the smell of bile, too, though that hadn’t occurred to me. Goode says it can also come across as something like the smell of crackers, but that’s far too kind/positive in my experience (unless the word has a different sense in British English).
I’m happy to say I have no idea what “corn chip fermenting inside a chicken’s butt” smells like. And you have my sympathy if you do.
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 I’ve ever had in my mouth, and there’s no possible way someone can convince me that it’s an enhancing characteristic of wine in any capacity.
I agree with OP, the Facebook discourse has been entertaining to say the least.
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. I’ve 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 it’s the importers’ 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.
This is something commonly quoted, but it’s not entirely true. In minuscule amounts (ie. what is when wine is “normally” mousy), this is very true: the wine smells fine, tastes fine and only in the aftertaste you get that horrible smack of mousiness.
However, I don’t know whether it’s when the levels of THP are higher than that, or if it’s some other compound (mousiness is actually not caused just by THP (which itself can be three different compunds: 2-acetyl-3,4,5,6-tetrahydropyridine, 2-acetyl-1,4,5,6-tetrahydropyridine (both abbreviated either ATHP or ACTPY) or 2-ethyltetrahydropyridine (abbreviated ETHP or ETPY)), but also by 2-acetylpyrroline (APY)), but I’ve tasted enough natural wines and sour ales where you can actually smell and taste mousiness on the midpalate, not just retronasally in the aftertaste. Those wines and beers are few and far between - I’d say 1 in every 25 to 50 mousy beverages - but they still are there. There are wines that smell like rancid nuts and sesame seeds already in the glass and there are wines that might smell just fine, yet having that unmistakable Cheerios taste appear on your palate already before you’ve swallowed even one little drop. I can actually go and dig multiple tasting notes on wines and beers like these, if you want to experience them yourself!
And FWIW, THP is also a molecule that can appear during Maillard reactions - and I’ve understood it is quite typical for an unfinished beer to show a tiny bit of mousiness early on. This character is believed to stem from Maillard reactions that can happen during mashing, but these qualities are also believed to disappear during bottle refermentation ie. carbonation. I don’t know how the chemistry is supposed to work here, but I’ve heard from several of my friends who brew their own beers that their beers can be subtly mousy for a short while, then it disappears.
Finally, I remember reading how brett can actually metabolize THP (and/or other molecules responsible of THP). This could explain how some wines (that don’t have meaningful amounts of brett) never see their mousiness go away, while others actually seem to resolve their mousiness. While I myself haven’t seen mousiness go anywhere (because I try to steer clear of mousy wines), I’ve heard from my natural wino geek friends that some wines that have been mousy upon release turn ok after some aging. However, I’ve been told this has taken anywhere from 5 to 10 years, not just a few months.
I’d consider any olfactory perception of wine in mouth as retronasal, not just the after taste or finish. Mouse definitely shows up in the midpalate retronasally after THP hits the mouth and tongue.
This is a genuine question for the winemakers here: Isn’t it true that any winemaker who bottles with mouse, which should be an obvious taint in the bulk wine before bottling of at perceptible levels, is knowingly delivering a flawed wine to the market?
I get that one has to make a living, so it would be a tough pill to swallow to hold such a wine back, but maybe there should be a disclosure requirement.
Your only path to counter this view I think is to try to normalize mouse as not a flaw. And this Punch article is a clear attempt to further that agenda.
Certainly the concentration of mousiness can vary as well, in the same way brett can. I might be naive, but I err on the side of believing winemakers who say that their mouse resolves with a bit of bottle aging. With that said, most bottles are bought to be consumed soon, and if a mousey bottle hits the market it’s an unrealistic expectation for that burden to be placed on the consumer to age further and get rid of a flaw.
If mousiness can sometimes go away, but only with sufficient brett, that doesn’t seem like the non-problem the author makes it out to be. I think all of the wines I’ve had after 2-10 years of aging that were mousy also had some level of brett. Almost all, anyway.
That is definitely true, as virtually all but the basic flavors are “tasted” retronasally. Tongue tastes only the five or so basic tastes.
However, no matter the terminology here, it’s quite uncommon to taste mousiness once the wine hits your tongue - usually it takes some time for wines to get their pH high enough for THP to become volatile and that doesn’t really happen as long as there is a good deal of wine in the mouth.
Yet in some wines even that is more than enough for a taster to recognize mousiness. I have no idea how these wines or beers differ from the beverages in which mousiness appears “normally”, ie. only in the aftertaste. Or why with some beverages you can smell the mousiness from the glass already, without even tasting the wine/beer.
Yes, the article seemed to take for granted that brett is a good thing – contributing classic elements to wines – without any consideration of the amount. And if you believe that brett helps combat mousiness, then the more brett you have the better.
Brett metabolizing THP? Fight flaws with flaws? If this is New Wave winemaking, I’ll stay out of the water.
That said, I’ve had some wonderful examples of natural wines, but I’m personally batting less than .500. My experiences with Metras and Chateau Le Puy come to mind. My last bottle of Le Puy was appropriately named. However, the bottle before that was outstanding. It’s a crap shoot I’d rather avoid. I personally don’t have a problem with a little sulfur at bottling.
Well, I’m not saying it’s a miracle cure, but I’d rather drink a wine that’s bretty rather than mousy. Most (not all) bretty wines are drinkable and some have been even fantastic, but mousiness ruins the wine immediately.
Agree with you on many (not all) natural wines being a crap shoot and a tiny dose of SO2 at bottling being a good thing.
