diff --git a/test/T750-gzip.sh b/test/T750-gzip.sh
index 5b678fa1..fac41d39 100755
--- a/test/T750-gzip.sh
+++ b/test/T750-gzip.sh
@@ -167,4 +167,11 @@ This is just a test message (#7)
 EOF
 test_expect_equal_file EXPECTED OUTPUT
 
+# there are more than 200 messages in this corpus
+add_email_corpus lkml
+test_begin_subtest "new doesn't run out of file descriptors with many gzipped files"
+ulimit -n 200
+gzip --recursive ${MAIL_DIR}
+test_expect_success "notmuch new"
+
 test_done
diff --git a/util/gmime-extra.c b/util/gmime-extra.c
index b515d126..04d8ed3d 100644
--- a/util/gmime-extra.c
+++ b/util/gmime-extra.c
@@ -29,6 +29,8 @@ _gzfile_maybe_filter (GMimeStream *file_stream)
 
 	/* ignore filter id */
 	(void) g_mime_stream_filter_add ((GMimeStreamFilter *) gzstream, gzfilter);
+	g_object_unref (gzfilter);
+	g_object_unref (file_stream);
 	return gzstream;
     } else {
 	return file_stream;