Oh, I should have been more clear. All I was trying to say was just like you can’t un-notice mousiness in a wine, I can’t un-notice the sherry in a whisky that was finished in a sherry cask. The sherry sticks-out like a sore thumb, and I can’t get around it.
Ah, ok, gotcha. Yes, that sounds like the same kind of phenomenon. Hard to ignore once you’ve noticed what you know what to look for.
Mousiness in wine is my greatest enemy! As i drink a lot of wines, with no added SO2, i sadly encounter this a lot. But people have very different thresholds of sensitive to it, it seems, also from personal experience.
A short article on it: Mousy - WINE DECODED
I stopped drinking a lot of “natural wine” on my own as a lot of the issues seem to come with enough air. So i mostly drink these types of wines with friends as you can empty the bottle quick enough 
I wrote an article on natural wine that I hope is reasonably balanced. https://winedecoded.com.au/qa-with-paul-where-do-you-stand-as-far-as-no-addition-so-called-natural-wines-are-concerned/
Exactly! Cap’n Crunch, King Vitamin (old school), and Freakies (also old school) have exactly this after-taste. Cheerios too, but to a lesser extent. And it’s the same taste you get if you burp 30 minutes after taking a multi-vitamin… For that reason, I assumed the Cap’n Crunch flavor comes from “spray on vitamins” used in these cereals.
Last night opened a 2019 Thevenet Morgan VV and it was slightly mousy upon opening (but still rather pleasant to drink). However, it was completely undrinkable after 2 hours. I should have drank it faster, and had to pour half the bottle out. However, in this case the distinct aftertaste was NOT cereal, but Fritos. Really yucky and now I’ve got 4 bottles of the stuff left to consume…
(much) more about mousiness here, for anyone who wants:
It seems that skin-contact whites, being pre-oxidized already, have a great capacity to stay open and not go downhill. My own Marsanne could last 5 days open in the fridge and not deteriorate (in fact, I preferred it about 3-4 days in). Why reds, that are also skin contact, seem to not fare as well in this regard I don’t fully understand. I’m sure an experienced winemaker might be able to fill us in why that’s the case.
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Does skin contact = oxidised? It doesn’t seem so to me.
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Nope, Russell…skin-contact whites does not automatically imply oxidized. There are plenty of ViniMacerati that do not show oxidation.
When the trend of qvervi-frmtd picked up steam some yrs ago, a la Georgian & Gravner wines, most were somewhat
oxidized, had a burnished bronze color, from the large air exposure in the large qvervi, where they were left to ferment for as long
as a yr or more. Hence, Levi Daltton’s term “orange wine” became the default term for skin-contact whites. But I only use that term
for the oxidized skin-contact whites. Which are, mostly, orange/burnished bronze.
But there are plenty of skin-contact whites that are made in amphorae w/ minimal exposure to O2. Wines of Ryme/Solminer/Forlorn-Hope/
Foradori/SandiSkerk/Rabaj, for example that come to mind.
To my taste, aromatic varieties work best as ViniMacerati. Getting the right length of skin-contact time so you still have some fruit
aromatics is a tough balancing act. OTOH, there are some w/ extended skin-contact, that are strongly phenolic on release, very austere, and
not much fun to drink when young. But they can evolve into beautiful/complex wines w/ age. But you pays your $$ and take your chances.
Tom
I suppose one could make a non-oxidized extended skin contact wine, if you blanket it with a gas or fill up the vessel completely (not so easy to do as volume changes throughout all stages of fermentation), but I would think that any wine made in an amphora will be somewhat oxidized. Once the blanket of CO2 from the fermentations go away and protection stops and the cap falls, it’s getting exposed to oxygen. Now that might be smaller surface area at the top of the amphora, but it’s still a surface area. Does that small area warrant calling wine oxidized? Maybe, maybe not. Sliding scales.
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Well, Adam…what you say is true. ElisabettaForadori ferments in (Jose Padilla…the Spanish producer of the best Amphorae) amphorae. Is there some
oxidation present?? Of course there is…for the reasons you sight. But I can never smell/taste oxidation in her whites. When fermentation is complete,
she covers the mouths of her amphorae tightly. If she left the tops open to the air, I expect you would taste some oxidation.
But when the wines are made in qvervi in Georgia, they just partially fill the qvervi, late the ferment go to town, and leave it that way for a yr or so. So there is
a lot more exposure to O2 and the wines usually taste oxidized to me. Which, really, isn’t all that bad a thing.
Tom
With this logic, virtually all red wines are then oxidized wines.
Yes, I suppose you could.
The lack of phenolic compounds in whites leaves them without protection. But they all get there eventually - whites just arrive quicker to that stage.
I think you would end up with a wine that tasted considerably more oxidized.
Early oxidation binds and removes easily oxidized compounds, that leaves you with a wine that stays fresh, and is perceived as less oxidative, than the wine produced without any exposure to oxidation. And as you noted, gives your own skin contact wines durability.
Macro-oxidation is a technique used by Rosé producers in southern France, especially those using Grenache, to help produce wines with better longevity. It’s also ised in many other regions, and many white wine producers, including myself, let juice get very oxidized before fermentation.
Regarding why red wines often do not last as long as skin ferment, or also normal whites, red wines see considerably more air during ferment, but also pH is a huge impact on free sulfur. A white at 3.0-3.2 pH has a much, much greater efficacy with regard to sulfur than a red at 3.4(which is typically considered high acid), much less a wine at 3.6-3.8.
But Marcus, you’re talking before fermentation, right? I thought we were talking about eliminating oxygen during and after fermentation, but still incorporating a skin regime program.
Really I mean pre-malolactic. Malo is another reductive phase and I am pretty loose with how much air the whites get prior to that. Even after that it’s more about balancing the reductive and the oxidative rather than choosing one way or the other.
Ferment eliminates air, the process itself is very, very biased against oxygen exposure. Even after ferment, IMO, oxygen needs to play a role.
Adam is right.
Virtually all red wines are oxidized wines. Ferment is a very reductive process, and oxidation is necessary to the vast majority of red wines to make them palatable.
If red wines didn’t need to be oxidized we would move them from fermenter to stainless tank. It’s much more efficient and oak flavors do not require barrels. And the non-traditional Spanish producers would not use nearly as much micro-ox on the wines as they do.
But the vast majority of red wines are aged with some oxygen exposure to reduce phenolics, counter reductive compounds, and broaden the fruit.
Why else do we decant young wines?
Ah! You will enjoy drinking the Thibaud Bourdignon wines by yourself, as they have excellent acidity and enough sulfur to age without issue 
Sorry, home late from the winery and a bit sassy. Also late the (new) party on this thread.
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Well, I’m aboard with that. I treat whites and reds roughly the same up until that point. I truck my grapes for 300 miles before crushing, so they get a warm soak, slight oxid, no matter what anyway, haha.
But the gap between primary and secondary can be long. And once it starts, it can be slow. I’m not experienced enough to determine if they have enough protection during that phase, so would err on an oxygen-deprived state for that period. Whites are tricky and a very often I find it’s hard to preserve that pristine freshness. I think reductive winemaking helps do that on whites. Part of the problems I have had with Chardonnay is that bitterness in its flavor profile. I have a hunch that’s related to oxygen in many cases. David Ramey once said that Chard is the Red grape of whites - and I think it gets treated that way, too. I know you can make Chardonnay without those bitter phenolics (as is evident by a few producers), but most of the time they have one thing in common - they’re pale in color, i.e. have prob not seen much oxygen. I’ve never had a deeper colored C that have had that clean taste. But I have had lighter colored ones with both, so… well, it’s confusing.
What would be an interesting experiment is to find out if extended skin contact in a utterly oxygen-deprived white wine fermentation would impart other phenolics than perhaps we’d assume. I think we mix up oxidization flavors with skin-contact/tannic flavors in orange wines. It would be interesting to eliminate the oxidization part completely and see what just the skin-contact does.