diff --git a/storage/remote/intern.go b/storage/remote/intern.go
index ab2741be5..5afa9a817 100644
--- a/storage/remote/intern.go
+++ b/storage/remote/intern.go
@@ -21,9 +21,18 @@ package remote
 import (
 	"sync"
 	"sync/atomic"
+
+	"github.com/prometheus/client_golang/prometheus"
+	"github.com/prometheus/client_golang/prometheus/promauto"
 )
 
 var interner = newPool()
+var noReferenceReleases = promauto.NewCounter(prometheus.CounterOpts{
+	Namespace: namespace,
+	Subsystem: subsystem,
+	Name:      "string_interner_zero_reference_releases_total",
+	Help:      "The number of times release has been called for strings that are not interned.",
+})
 
 type pool struct {
 	mtx  sync.RWMutex
@@ -73,7 +82,8 @@ func (p *pool) release(s string) {
 	p.mtx.RUnlock()
 
 	if !ok {
-		panic("released unknown string")
+		noReferenceReleases.Inc()
+		return
 	}
 
 	refs := atomic.AddInt64(&interned.refs, -1)
diff --git a/storage/remote/queue_manager.go b/storage/remote/queue_manager.go
index 9dd50ee60..1fc72de47 100644
--- a/storage/remote/queue_manager.go
+++ b/storage/remote/queue_manager.go
@@ -339,6 +339,10 @@ func (t *QueueManager) Stop() {
 
 // StoreSeries keeps track of which series we know about for lookups when sending samples to remote.
 func (t *QueueManager) StoreSeries(series []tsdb.RefSeries, index int) {
+	// Lock before any calls to labelsToLabels proto, as that's where string interning is done.
+	t.seriesMtx.Lock()
+	defer t.seriesMtx.Unlock()
+
 	temp := make(map[uint64][]prompb.Label, len(series))
 	for _, s := range series {
 		ls := processExternalLabels(s.Labels, t.externalLabels)
@@ -350,8 +354,6 @@ func (t *QueueManager) StoreSeries(series []tsdb.RefSeries, index int) {
 		temp[s.Ref] = labelsToLabelsProto(rl)
 	}
 
-	t.seriesMtx.Lock()
-	defer t.seriesMtx.Unlock()
 	for ref, labels := range temp {
 		t.seriesSegmentIndexes[ref] = index
 
diff --git a/storage/remote/queue_manager_test.go b/storage/remote/queue_manager_test.go
index f709c452f..f79bfb675 100644
--- a/storage/remote/queue_manager_test.go
+++ b/storage/remote/queue_manager_test.go
@@ -32,6 +32,7 @@ import (
 	"github.com/golang/snappy"
 	"github.com/stretchr/testify/require"
 
+	client_testutil "github.com/prometheus/client_golang/prometheus/testutil"
 	"github.com/prometheus/common/model"
 	"github.com/prometheus/prometheus/config"
 	"github.com/prometheus/prometheus/pkg/labels"
@@ -257,6 +258,39 @@ func TestReshardRaceWithStop(t *testing.T) {
 	}
 }
 
+func TestReleaseNoninternedString(t *testing.T) {
+	c := NewTestStorageClient()
+	var m *QueueManager
+	h := sync.Mutex{}
+
+	h.Lock()
+
+	m = NewQueueManager(nil, "", newEWMARate(ewmaWeight, shardUpdateDuration), config.DefaultQueueConfig, nil, nil, c, defaultFlushDeadline)
+	m.Start()
+	go func() {
+		for {
+			m.SeriesReset(1)
+		}
+	}()
+
+	for i := 1; i < 1000; i++ {
+		m.StoreSeries([]tsdb.RefSeries{
+			tsdb.RefSeries{
+				Ref: uint64(i),
+				Labels: tsdbLabels.Labels{
+					tsdbLabels.Label{
+						Name:  "asdf",
+						Value: fmt.Sprintf("%d", i),
+					},
+				},
+			},
+		}, 0)
+	}
+
+	metric := client_testutil.ToFloat64(noReferenceReleases)
+	testutil.Assert(t, metric == 0, "expected there to be no calls to release for strings that were not already interned: %d", int(metric))
+}
+
 func createTimeseries(n int) ([]tsdb.RefSample, []tsdb.RefSeries) {
 	samples := make([]tsdb.RefSample, 0, n)
 	series := make([]tsdb.RefSeries, 0, n)
diff --git a/vendor/github.com/prometheus/client_golang/prometheus/testutil/testutil.go b/vendor/github.com/prometheus/client_golang/prometheus/testutil/testutil.go
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..4c72bc6cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/vendor/github.com/prometheus/client_golang/prometheus/testutil/testutil.go
@@ -0,0 +1,187 @@
+// Copyright 2018 The Prometheus Authors
+// Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
+// you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
+// You may obtain a copy of the License at
+//
+// http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
+//
+// Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
+// distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
+// WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
+// See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
+// limitations under the License.
+
+// Package testutil provides helpers to test code using the prometheus package
+// of client_golang.
+//
+// While writing unit tests to verify correct instrumentation of your code, it's
+// a common mistake to mostly test the instrumentation library instead of your
+// own code. Rather than verifying that a prometheus.Counter's value has changed
+// as expected or that it shows up in the exposition after registration, it is
+// in general more robust and more faithful to the concept of unit tests to use
+// mock implementations of the prometheus.Counter and prometheus.Registerer
+// interfaces that simply assert that the Add or Register methods have been
+// called with the expected arguments. However, this might be overkill in simple
+// scenarios. The ToFloat64 function is provided for simple inspection of a
+// single-value metric, but it has to be used with caution.
+//
+// End-to-end tests to verify all or larger parts of the metrics exposition can
+// be implemented with the CollectAndCompare or GatherAndCompare functions. The
+// most appropriate use is not so much testing instrumentation of your code, but
+// testing custom prometheus.Collector implementations and in particular whole
+// exporters, i.e. programs that retrieve telemetry data from a 3rd party source
+// and convert it into Prometheus metrics.
+package testutil
+
+import (
+	"bytes"
+	"fmt"
+	"io"
+
+	"github.com/prometheus/common/expfmt"
+
+	dto "github.com/prometheus/client_model/go"
+
+	"github.com/prometheus/client_golang/prometheus"
+	"github.com/prometheus/client_golang/prometheus/internal"
+)
+
+// ToFloat64 collects all Metrics from the provided Collector. It expects that
+// this results in exactly one Metric being collected, which must be a Gauge,
+// Counter, or Untyped. In all other cases, ToFloat64 panics. ToFloat64 returns
+// the value of the collected Metric.
+//
+// The Collector provided is typically a simple instance of Gauge or Counter, or
+// – less commonly – a GaugeVec or CounterVec with exactly one element. But any
+// Collector fulfilling the prerequisites described above will do.
+//
+// Use this function with caution. It is computationally very expensive and thus
+// not suited at all to read values from Metrics in regular code. This is really
+// only for testing purposes, and even for testing, other approaches are often
+// more appropriate (see this package's documentation).
+//
+// A clear anti-pattern would be to use a metric type from the prometheus
+// package to track values that are also needed for something else than the
+// exposition of Prometheus metrics. For example, you would like to track the
+// number of items in a queue because your code should reject queuing further
+// items if a certain limit is reached. It is tempting to track the number of
+// items in a prometheus.Gauge, as it is then easily available as a metric for
+// exposition, too. However, then you would need to call ToFloat64 in your
+// regular code, potentially quite often. The recommended way is to track the
+// number of items conventionally (in the way you would have done it without
+// considering Prometheus metrics) and then expose the number with a
+// prometheus.GaugeFunc.
+func ToFloat64(c prometheus.Collector) float64 {
+	var (
+		m      prometheus.Metric
+		mCount int
+		mChan  = make(chan prometheus.Metric)
+		done   = make(chan struct{})
+	)
+
+	go func() {
+		for m = range mChan {
+			mCount++
+		}
+		close(done)
+	}()
+
+	c.Collect(mChan)
+	close(mChan)
+	<-done
+
+	if mCount != 1 {
+		panic(fmt.Errorf("collected %d metrics instead of exactly 1", mCount))
+	}
+
+	pb := &dto.Metric{}
+	m.Write(pb)
+	if pb.Gauge != nil {
+		return pb.Gauge.GetValue()
+	}
+	if pb.Counter != nil {
+		return pb.Counter.GetValue()
+	}
+	if pb.Untyped != nil {
+		return pb.Untyped.GetValue()
+	}
+	panic(fmt.Errorf("collected a non-gauge/counter/untyped metric: %s", pb))
+}
+
+// CollectAndCompare registers the provided Collector with a newly created
+// pedantic Registry. It then does the same as GatherAndCompare, gathering the
+// metrics from the pedantic Registry.
+func CollectAndCompare(c prometheus.Collector, expected io.Reader, metricNames ...string) error {
+	reg := prometheus.NewPedanticRegistry()
+	if err := reg.Register(c); err != nil {
+		return fmt.Errorf("registering collector failed: %s", err)
+	}
+	return GatherAndCompare(reg, expected, metricNames...)
+}
+
+// GatherAndCompare gathers all metrics from the provided Gatherer and compares
+// it to an expected output read from the provided Reader in the Prometheus text
+// exposition format. If any metricNames are provided, only metrics with those
+// names are compared.
+func GatherAndCompare(g prometheus.Gatherer, expected io.Reader, metricNames ...string) error {
+	got, err := g.Gather()
+	if err != nil {
+		return fmt.Errorf("gathering metrics failed: %s", err)
+	}
+	if metricNames != nil {
+		got = filterMetrics(got, metricNames)
+	}
+	var tp expfmt.TextParser
+	wantRaw, err := tp.TextToMetricFamilies(expected)
+	if err != nil {
+		return fmt.Errorf("parsing expected metrics failed: %s", err)
+	}
+	want := internal.NormalizeMetricFamilies(wantRaw)
+
+	return compare(got, want)
+}
+
+// compare encodes both provided slices of metric families into the text format,
+// compares their string message, and returns an error if they do not match.
+// The error contains the encoded text of both the desired and the actual
+// result.
+func compare(got, want []*dto.MetricFamily) error {
+	var gotBuf, wantBuf bytes.Buffer
+	enc := expfmt.NewEncoder(&gotBuf, expfmt.FmtText)
+	for _, mf := range got {
+		if err := enc.Encode(mf); err != nil {
+			return fmt.Errorf("encoding gathered metrics failed: %s", err)
+		}
+	}
+	enc = expfmt.NewEncoder(&wantBuf, expfmt.FmtText)
+	for _, mf := range want {
+		if err := enc.Encode(mf); err != nil {
+			return fmt.Errorf("encoding expected metrics failed: %s", err)
+		}
+	}
+
+	if wantBuf.String() != gotBuf.String() {
+		return fmt.Errorf(`
+metric output does not match expectation; want:
+
+%s
+got:
+
+%s`, wantBuf.String(), gotBuf.String())
+
+	}
+	return nil
+}
+
+func filterMetrics(metrics []*dto.MetricFamily, names []string) []*dto.MetricFamily {
+	var filtered []*dto.MetricFamily
+	for _, m := range metrics {
+		for _, name := range names {
+			if m.GetName() == name {
+				filtered = append(filtered, m)
+				break
+			}
+		}
+	}
+	return filtered
+}
diff --git a/vendor/modules.txt b/vendor/modules.txt
index 773fe7f4a..64a1a5588 100644
--- a/vendor/modules.txt
+++ b/vendor/modules.txt
@@ -231,6 +231,7 @@ github.com/prometheus/client_golang/api/prometheus/v1
 github.com/prometheus/client_golang/prometheus/promhttp
 github.com/prometheus/client_golang/prometheus/promauto
 github.com/prometheus/client_golang/prometheus/internal
+github.com/prometheus/client_golang/prometheus/testutil
 # github.com/prometheus/client_model v0.0.0-20190115171406-56726106282f
 github.com/prometheus/client_model/go
 # github.com/prometheus/common v0.3.0