I don’t drink a lot of natural wines, but had my share, but I also don’t seek them out. Many have been good, and some have been… well, odd, weird and sometimes funky (yeah, there’s a whole thread on Funk). Some end up being interesting and fun. I’m sorta Meh on it all.
That said, we were in Copenhagen in the summer right before Covid. Copenhagen seems to have a love affair with natural wines, especially the cafes, and especially for Rose. We stopped in one cafe and noticed a lot of people had a bottle of the same rose on their tables. So we ordered a bottle as well (figured the regulars/locals must know something, and the price was right). When the server poured a glass, I noticed that it was slightly sparkling. I said something to the server that I was expecting a still wine. Her response, “Yeah. Sometimes with this wine it’s still, and sometimes it’s sparkling. You never know.”
On the other hand, a lot of sweet German wines were heavily sulfured until recent decades. They smelled of it young but evolved beautifully. The same was true of sweet wines from the Loire. So sometimes it seems that the sulfur resolves with enough time.
In his book “Flawless: Understanding Faults in Wine,” Jamie Goode says the figure may be up to one-third of the population.
He quotes Eric Texier, who has been researching mousiness for a long time. Texier has found that, counterintuitively, high pH high (low acid) and high alcohol wines are less prone to mousiness. Generally, high acid, wines are less vulnerable to microbiological faults.
Texier has found that very small sulfur doses during fermentation, 10ppm, are sufficient to prevent mousiness, Goode reports.
I agree with everything you say here except the “I’m confused” part. We have to admit that “how I ended up walking into a mouse trap” It’s a little bit of a click-bait …and some people might interpreter that tittle as an invitation to rant about natural wine
Indeed. I saw in another thread that you’ve mentioned Biggio Hamina’s 2012 Riesling Sunnyside, I have a few of those as well, and every time I’ve opened a bottle the first sniff took me back to the early 90’s when I was at the gas station filling the tank of my Fiat 147 diesel.
@Adam_Frisch & @alan_weinberg, Welcome to the club of tasters that can deeply enjoy a mousy wine while the rest feels like puking
I think I know exactly the smell you are describing because it’s so prominent in that Riesling, but to me it smells like the inside of a jar of tennis balls, like that somewhat pungent and artificial plasticky smell. To me it’s not petrol, but I might have to go sniff some gas just to see if I get the connection.
My note on what i think others mention as petrol is always rubberduck. It just reminds me more of one of those plastic rubberducks. Tennis ball also fits it better for me as Mikko mentions it.
I guess that I’ll need to buy a rubberduck and a tube of tennis balls to get a reminder of those aromas, and Mikko, if you decide to walk into a gas station with a wine glass and have a pour from the diesel pump please make sure you post a video, it may look extravagant but those are some of the things we do in the name of science.
Going back to mousiness, have anyone tried to add a hint of sodium bicarbonate to a wine that you know it’s mousy? Theoretically speaking, that should elevate the Ph of the wine and make the mousy components volatile, right?
This pretty much. I think petrol is something somebody has coined with the distinctive Riesling smell, even though it actually smells quite identical to diesel. Several times I’ve thought of “mmm… Riesling…” when I’ve walked past a bus that has its engine on.
So when reading “petrol” in wine context, one should actually think of diesel!
Yeah, I tend to call it diesel although sometimes petrol from influence of what others call it. Oddly, I never call it gasoline even though I’m in the US.
BTW, if you take a wine glass to the gas station, smell but don’t taste. You’ll taste it for 12 hours if you manage to swallow any (unfortunate experience siphoning gas from farm equipment).
The above discussion on calling it diesel and this comment by Al on the note appearing beyond Riesling, reminded me of the first formal wine class I ever took (16+ years ago).
The guy who taught it, said that diesel was the note that he looked for in Chilean terroir. He was convinced even their red had it.
That sounds more like Chilean wines that are fermented by specific yeast strains. Certain commercial yeast strains can produce quite a bit of TDN if there are just suitable precursors present in the must.
I remember one acquaintance who worked in the Finnish monopoly quality control telling me how once a new vintage of one Chilean Syrah had a ridiculously petrol (or diesel) -heavy nose, smelling more like Riesling than Syrah. In preceding vintages this wine had always been a very normal, uninteresting new world Syrah. We both suspected the wine was fermented with a yeast originally purposed to ferment Riesling.
Most likely those Chilean and Australian Rieslings that have copious amounts of petrol (/diesel) in the nose right after the wine has been bottled are not a result of terroir, climate or weather, but just plain ol’ winemaking with selected yeasts.
I’ve used “petrol” from the beginning, simply because I was taught, or knew of, its applicability in the given context. Tennis ball can resonates. I’ve used “new rubber tires” before, as well.
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…and some people might interpreter that tittle as an invitation to rant about natural wine