The style is believed to have been first developed in the 16th century-more than 100 years before Dom Perignon exclaimed that he was "tasting the stars" and nearly 300 years before the Widow Cliquot pioneered methode champenoise. According to legend, a monk in a monastery in the South of France discovered that one of his bottles had begun refermenting and small bubbles were forming within the bottle. It was a complete accident, likely brought on by an incomplete fermentation paired with warm spring weather that reawakened leftover yeast in the bottle.
The method goes unmentioned in history books until the 1990s when, in the Loire Valley, winemakers made the style their own, and Pet-Nat became the region's annual celebration of the end of harvest, much like the Nouveau bottlings in Beaujolais.
Then, about 20 years later, Pet-Nat returned once again. Now, Pet-Nat producers have popped up all over the world, from South Australia to Eastern Europe to the heart of Texas-places where winemakers want to produce fun, fresh wines without traditional stylistic limits.
Faith Armstrong, founder and winemaker for Onward Wines, has been producing Pet-Nat for more than a decade in Sonoma. Even after all this time, her passion for the style is evident in how she speaks of her wine and her own production philosophy.
"The level of intention keeps producers more stimulated and engaged, and that comes through in the wine," she said. "You taste the story."
The production process isn't legally defined, so each producer's iteration can be wholly unique, depending on the varietal used, the fermentation process and a slew of other winemaking decisions. But what seems to unite all Pet-Nat producers is the desire to make a wine that is as fun to make as it is to drink.
Dan Person and his wife Jacqueline founded Carboniste in Sonoma in 2017 and have been making a Pet-Nat of Pinot Grigio since the company's early days. Person had encountered the style while studying winemaking and found himself intrigued by the puzzle that was Pet-Nat.
"To me it was more of a challenge," he described. "Here's this set of constraints I normally don't have to deal with. You give up a lot of control, but the wine you make is still the product of your skills as a winemaker."
Yet without any limits on the style, there is ample room for error and variation. Winemakers from across the U.S. spoke with Wine Business about their production style and shared how they resolved common issues, improved quality and made the style their own.
The money question
For many winemakers, the greatest barrier to entering traditional sparkling production is financial.
Jay Anderson, winemaker at Foundry Vineyards in Walla Walla, Washington, had tried making traditional method sparkling as part of a collaboration with another winery in 2014. He liked the results but found the traditional method too costly and labor-intensive to invest in making it long-term, so he started researching how he could make sparkling in a simpler manner.
Pet-Nat is typically viewed as a more affordable, entry-level sparkling wine that can be produced at smaller scale without expensive machinery and lengthy aging regimens. According to the winemakers, this was, for the most part, true.
"From a producer standpoint, it's way less equipment and less technical expertise," said Silouan Bradford, founder and winemaker at Saint Tryphon Farm and Vineyards in Boerne, Texas. To him, forced carbonation didn't make sense for the brand, and they lacked the resources to make methode champenoise. Pet-Nat fit their brand ethos and their budget.
Much of traditional sparkling wine can be done "old school" by hand, including riddling and disgorging, but there isn't an affordable alternative to adding a cork and cage. Anderson said that a corker-cager isn't an easily obtainable piece of equipment, and it's not easy to do it by hand.
Whereas when making a Pet-Nat, winemakers only need a simple bottle capper to apply the crown cap; these are readily available at many winemaking supply shops and relatively cheap.
If a winemaker wanted to produce traditional method without handling the secondary fermentation in-house, they could transfer the base wine to a specialized custom crush facility where tirage, secondary fermentation, disgorging and labeling are handled by in-house professionals. But for smaller producers who are looking to make a limited case production of sparkling, this may not be the best solution.
At Onward Wines, Armstrong produces only a few hundred cases of Pet-Nat each year.
"All of those more modern methods are more controlled and more repeatable," she observed. "When it comes to scaling production, larger volumes and wider demand, it makes more sense [to do traditional method]."
Not only is the initial investment in machinery daunting to winemakers, but the lengthy aging process of traditional method can be a financial burden. Pet-Nat can be aged but is typically released promptly after the fermentation is complete, making it easier for winemakers to see a return on their labors.
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