TN: 2013 Radikon - Ribolla Gialla (Italy, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Venezia Giulia IGT)

WINE TALK
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2013 Radikon Ribolla Gialla - Italy, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Venezia Giulia IGT (1/26/2021)
– popped and poured –
– tasted non-blind over 9 days –
– 500 mL bottle –

NOSE: expressive; high-toned and tangy; slightly tawny; light sawdust; petitgrain; cider vinegar; camembert cheese in the background, too.

BODY: hazy brown/orange color; light to medium-light bodied.

TASTE: tannic; strong, citric, acidity; cider vinegar; faint whisper of tart red berries; 13% alc. is not noticeable; speaks very strongly of the orange wine style in which it was made. Drink or Hold.

50, 5, 12, 17, 8 = (92 pts.)

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Over 9 days? Didn’t fall apart? VA start skyrocketing? Turn mousy or anything other nasty at any point?

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VA didn’t go crazy. Falling apart a little at the end, but still enjoyable.

and now presents as good of a time as any to ask, "What does “mousy” mean in the context of wine? I’ve seen that used many times, but don’t know what it means.

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Cool! I’ve had a handful of Radikon wines and even have one in my cellar ATM, but never had the guts to experiment how they survive over the course of several days. They are always so wild I’m afraid they will go haywire if left open for too long, as no-SO2 wines often do. However, the best don’t turn bad and apparently Radikon is in that tier.

and now presents as good of a time as any to ask, "What does “mousy” mean in the context of wine? I’ve seen that used many times, but don’t know what it means.

The short answer is: it’s a sort of very unpleasant flavor of stale bread, rancid nuts, Weetabix and/or sesame seeds that normally appears in the aftertaste. The wine’s nose is often clean (however tends to be accompanied by elevated levels of VA and/or brett) and the taste as well. However quite soon (or even immediately) after you swallow/spit the wine, this nutty/bready/dirty flavor appears, often eliminating any other flavors there were. A great wine can turn horrid in matter of just seconds. I’ve had wines I thought I loved and then suddenly the aftertaste is so bad you want to retch. The term “mousy” comes from the taste being very similar to mouse droppings / uncleaned pet rodent cage (as attested in person by multiple pet rat owners).

The long answer is: it’s (often, not always) THP aka. tetrahydropyridine, a chemical compound that is produced by unwanted lactic bacteria, or to lesser extent, brettanomyces (I’ve had lots of mousy beers and wines that have not had any obvious bretty qualities, meaning that brett is not the main culprit, unlike many seem to think). This compound is non-volatile in low-pH (ie. acidic) medium, which means you really can’t smell (and taste) it. However, when you swallow the wine/beer, your saliva neutralises the last remaining drops, raising its pH up to 7, when the compound becomes volatile and suddenly you are able to “taste” it as the compound vapors move retronasally from your mouth and throat to your nasal cavity, where the compounds are registered and “tasted”, making the aftertaste feel, well, mousy (or “hantavirus” as one mr. Hill here on the forum describes it - which I find rather odd, because viruses don’t smell or taste of anything).

In very high concentrations THP actually becomes detectable already in the nose. 95% of the mousy wines and beers I’ve had have been only rather mildly mousy in the aftertaste, making them unpleasant and faulty, but nothing too bad. However, I’ve had a few handful of beverages where the mousiness has been very obvious already in the nose. It doesn’t smell as bad as the taste, but still bad. You can already say there that “this is gonna be helluva mousy” - and you’re never wrong. These are rare, but they still prove that while mainly a fault tasted only in aftertaste, it is not exclusively in the aftertaste.

The compound is created in the presence of oxygen and in the absence of SO2. Normally even a smallest amount of SO2 is enough to knock out the rogue lactic bacteria and keep brett from producing any THP, which is why it is mainly a problem of the no-SO2 wines. Its effect also seems to be exacerbated by the presence of oxygen; a wine that feels wild and funky upon opening, might be completely devoid of mousiness immediately after the cork is popped, but starting to exhibit mousy flavors after an hour or two, turning completely undrinkable by the next day.

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Oh and I wouldn’t know since we don’t have 'em here, but many people in the funky home brewing circles describe mousiness as a sort of “grainy Cheerios” taste. So if your wine starts to taste like Cheerios once you’ve swallowed it, yup - that’s mousiness.

I’ve read that some home brewers (even craft brewers) actually aim for the flavor “just to boost the grainy malt flavors in the beer”, but mainly the flavor is considered as a serious flaw and these people are justly ridiculed.

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Brian,
Mousey is, to me, a very distinctive smell & taste I find mostly/often in “natural” wines. When you are tearing down a pile of firewood, you’ll often come across a mouse’s nest… shredded paper & leaves, filled with stale mouse pee & poop. A very distinctive/unpleasant smell. I also call it “hantavirus” because that’s where you can pick up hantavirus.
As usual, Otto’s description is more precise.

If you’d like to come to NM and help me tear down a woodpile, you’d be more than welcome.
Tom

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Fascinating; I wish I would have known all that before finishing it on Day 9; and I’m quite glad I at least asked now! By way of very poor memory — yeah, it very well could have been a bit mousy at the end. FWIW, I recorked the bottle and put it in a cold refrigerator between various tastings from the bottle.

Damn … I have three more bottles – all at home – and now I’m tempted to open another just to see if I can get it to go mousy so I can experience this. … I could sacrifice the tail end of a bottle.

One anticipated problem, potentially: I like some pretty funky-ass shit, so mousiness is something that might be present and I’m simply not identifying it as something bad. I am beyond interested in this now.

Thanks again, Otto & Tom. [cheers.gif]

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Normally mousiness is something that an accustomed taster can already guess it’s going to appear if the wine feels funky in a this special certain way that promises mousiness (and it’s always a positive surprise if a wine doesn’t turn mousy!). However, I’ve had some wines that have been great for the day and and day 2, but after three days a slightest touch of mousiness started to appear (this was a Bernard Baudry wine, btw - a producer that isn’t even a naturalist! I guess it’s possible there were still some viable brett cells in the wine that kicked into next gear with a dose of oxygen). Nevertheless, if a wine is to turn mousy, it normally doesn’t take more than a few hours or perhaps waiting overnight.

Mousiness also seems to be something people naturally don’t notice. I’ve made several of my friends notice mousiness in a walk-around wine fairs or tasting situations where they are enjoying certain wines and I tell them to take a good sip, swirl it around their mouth, pay attention to the fruit flavors, swallow the wine and then pay special attention to the aftertaste how the fruit flavors suddenly fade and are taken over by this stale bread flavor. You can really see how their faces twist from curiosity into disgust. The funny thing is that they’ve been sipping away these wines all the time and haven’t noticed it ever before - all the wines have been terrific. Once I’ve said what to look for, they can’t not notice it anymore. So I guess not noticing it can be a bliss, in one sense. neener

I’ve heard, however, that Japanese actually know the flavor and enjoy it. I don’t know if it’s an urban legend but I’ve also heard how if a batch of natural wine turns heavily mousy, they can always sell it in Japan, because they lap it up in no time.

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The phenomenon you describe, Otto, I’ve experienced with sherry-finished whiskies…it can be damning.

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Well, that must be something completely different. I doubt THP is a compound that could survive through distillation and since whisky is made from a malt mash that doesn’t see any brett or lactic bacteria, it doesn’t seem plausible that there would be anything that would produce any THP to begin with.

I think you are now confusing normal aftertaste of a Sherry-finished whisky with mousiness (although I’ve never noticed any Sherry-finished whisky to have an aftertaste of rancid nuts, cheerios or stale bread).

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A personal anecdote, may be of some interest here. I went to a Radikon tasting some time ago (think it was 2010 or 2011). I knew Stanko from before, so, at the end of the tasting, we ended up chatting for a while. There were some 10-15 bottles of his different wines (mid-2000 vintages) still on the table that had been opened but barely drunk from. When it was time to leave, he asked if I wanted them. To cut a long story short, it took me the best part of two weeks to go through the lot with friends and family. Over that period, not a single one of those opened bottles showed any sign of decline at all.

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Why would it? I’ve found many orange-styled wines to be rather inert after opening; they really don’t change all that much even if open a long (days to weeks) long.

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Me too, but zero-SO2 wines (especially those that exhibit some vinegary notes of VA) tend to be more unstable. For example I’ve had numerous Georgian naturalist kvevri wines that have been excellent upon opening, but turned rather mousy and unpleasant overnight.

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I’m hoping you mean that the rat owners are “extrapolating” from the smell of the droppings to the taste/flavor you’re describing (and not tasting their rat droppings)?

Seriously, I know exactly what you’re describing, but have never heard/used the term mousey.

I agree that an unusually high percentage of the “orange” wines can go this route, maybe something in the 40-60% range, but i have also had plenty that held up quite well for days, and I’ve always attributed that to the fact that they may be partially protected against oxidation by the oxidative nature of the wine making. That said, my experience with Radikon (from much earlier vintages…circa 2004-2007) was that it was one of the worst wines for this “mousy” characteristic. By contrast, the COS Pithos Bianco and the Vodopivec Vitovska have both survived several days in the fridge.

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Funny, since the term has been around for probably decades - at least in French (goût de souris) and German (Mäuseln). I’ve seen the term appear in English in terms that are well over 10 years old, so it’s quite established term. What term have you used for it, then?

But as a person who has worked for (too) many years in a wine shop, explaining customers how one can say a wine tastes of leather or barnyard or earth, I must say the joke’s getting a bit old.[/quote]

I agree that an unusually high percentage of the “orange” wines can go this route, maybe something in the 40-60% range, but i have also had plenty that held up quite well for days, and I’ve always attributed that to the fact that they may be partially protected against oxidation by the oxidative nature of the wine making.

For some, probably, but I’ve had lots and lots of orange wines that have not been made any more oxidatively than your typical red wine. Some of these wines can still stay fresh for remarkably long after opening.

40-60% sounds awfully high and I can’t agree with that, although I do agree how a high percentage of orange wines can turn mousy. That must be because a huge majority of orange wines are made by naturalist / minimum interventionist wineries / winemakers and of course you are going to get a disproportionately high amount of funky wines if you have virtually no conventionally made wines, just minimum intervention wines.

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This is also my understanding of mousy. I definitely view it as something that shows up in both the nose and palate of a wine. Like many wine components there are varying levels of sensitivity to it, and it can be oppressive to some while others don’t notice it at all.

Nice note too! That’s always been one of my favorite orange wines.

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In very high levels of THP it can show up in the nose, but for the most part it’s not volatile - you can’t really smell the mousiness no matter how hard you tried.

And I’ve certainly noticed that there are varying levels of sensitivity to it. It’s also one of the compounds that some people can’t detect because of genetics - they lack the receptors. I’m starting to think one of the natural wine importers here in Finland is one of those people - at least based on how many of their wines that I’ve tasted have been mousy! [snort.gif]

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I haven’t used any specific term for it in the past. In fact, I’ve wondered if there was a “word” for it. I do want to be clear that I’m referring to something OTHER than than (and quite distinctive compared to) the other terms you reference such as barnyard, leather and other descriptors, which are far more common than this and are typically associated with brett (whether merde, zoo cage, horsey, band-aid, barnyard, wet-dog, “funk”, earthy, etc.). The particular smell that I’m describing is more in line with some combination of rancid oil, acrid (slightly uriney) and chemical (reminding me of the aftertaste of both fortified cereals and the smell of multi-vitamin supplements). And as you mention, one of the more unique aspects of it is the way it often comes out only after hours of air (or overnight). I get it a lot with Thevenet Beaujolais, which I usually love, but have learned to consume on day one so it doesn’t get lost to “mouse”.

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Yes, good point. The other descriptors I used were not related to mousiness. Definitely more from the brett end of the spectrum.

And I’ve also noticed that especially recently many of the naturalist Bojos seem to be showing more and more tendency towards mousiness. I’ve had such wines every now and then, but I think it seems to be getting worse as of late.

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Cap’n Crunch. Can’t un-taste it.