# Clown: the Chenin Blanc that wouldn't sparkle By Dan Person, winemaker and co-founder at Carboniste. Published 2026-10-30. Canonical page: https://carboniste.com/blog/clown-chenin-blanc ![A bottle of 2023 Carboniste Clown Chenin Blanc on a kitchen table beside a roast chicken in a cast-iron pan, a glass of pale gold wine, and a hand carving the chicken](https://carboniste.com/images/blog/p15-clown-roast-chicken-v2-2400.webp) **The short answer:** the **Clown** is a still Chenin Blanc that was supposed to be a sparkling wine. We bottled it in 2023 as a pét-nat, and it refused to finish fermenting in the bottle. Two years and a lot of stubbornness later, it restarted on its own in barrel and turned out to be a beautiful, expressive Chenin. So we bottled it still. It's our first still white, and it wasn't the plan. ## The pét-nat that wasn't A pét-nat gets bottled during harvest, straight from the first fermentation, while the wine still has some sugar and active yeast in it. The fermentation finishes in the bottle, and that's where the bubbles come from. We do it every year with the [Mackerel](/blog/what-is-pet-nat). With this Chenin, I bottled it, and it stopped fermenting before it finished. We ended up with a wine that was a little fizzy but didn't actually sparkle. We call that a "pét-not," and it's not a compliment. It isn't a sparkling wine. It's a fizzy, slightly sweet wine, and that's a problem. It's also hard to fix. You can't just flip a switch and restart a fermentation. So I did what most people would do. I ignored it. I kicked the can down the road until I figured out what the heck to do with it. ## Every trick in the book A year later, I tried to restart it the traditional-method way. I built a new yeast culture and added riddling aid. Then we re-inoculated every single bottle: opened each one, took out a tiny bit of wine, added the yeast culture, and closed them all back up, this time with bidules, the little plastic cups that sit under a crown cap and catch the yeast. It still wouldn't ferment. Something about the nutrition and chemistry of that wine made the yeast unhappy. And doing anything more with it took more work than I wanted to take on at the moment, so I ignored it again for about another year. At two years in bottle, I knew something had to happen. So we opened every single bottle and poured them all into barrels, about eight barrels' worth. On the same day, we washed those same bottles and refilled them, so we didn't waste the glass. Glass isn't cheap. It made for a very strange work day. That is not what we normally do. ## The wine had other ideas In barrel, the wine started fermenting again all by itself, with its own native yeast. I was grateful. I was also expecting it to taste strange after everything it had been through, and I figured we'd have to blend it away. It tasted great. It was this really expressive, true-to-the-grape Chenin Blanc, with honey and lanolin on the nose. Two years on its yeast in bottle gave it a creamy texture. And because it spent those two years sealed in bottle instead of in barrel, it saw very little air, so it's still fresh and bright. It has a fresh, aromatic side and a developed palate at the same time, which is a really fun combination. We could have blended it away, but it didn't need to be. It stood on its own, and I wanted other people to have a chance to try it. So it became its own wine. It's not something we'll probably ever do again, because it was a lot of work. ## Why Chenin Blanc, and why Gimelli Chenin Blanc is famously a high-quality grape. It's used in France and around the world to make serious wine, and I'd tasted enough of it from other places to know it could be special here. The fruit comes from **Gimelli Vineyard in the Cienega Valley**, in San Benito County. Friends of mine who get fruit there vouch for it, and 2023 was the year we tried it out. It was quite a vintage to start with. 2023 was the coolest year California had seen in decades, a once-in-25-years kind of season, very mild, with slow ripening. Gimelli isn't an early site, and the vines took a long time to mature. Because of that, we got Chenin that was flavorful and complex while still holding onto its acidity. That's a big part of why this wine could survive what we put it through. ## Why a clown fish? The name is short for clownfish. The idea is that this wine is a bit of a clown. I had an idea for the wine, and it had other ideas for itself. It goofed around with me: it didn't want to ferment, and then the moment I put it in barrel, it started fermenting. ## What to eat with it I'm not going to pretend to be a chef here. Chenin Blanc has classic partners from the Loire Valley, and they work beautifully with the Clown: a roast chicken with herbs and lemon, pork with apples, goat cheese, or white fish in a butter sauce. The acidity cuts through the richness, and the honeyed side of the wine meets the browned, savory flavors halfway. Serve it cool, between fridge and cellar temperature, and let it open up in the glass. **The one thing to remember:** wine is an exploration. It's not one thing the winemaker knows it's going to be, or it shouldn't be. I want to discover our wines, not define them, because that's how you end up with wines that are interesting instead of what you expect. I want to make wines that surprise and delight people because they've never had anything like them. The Clown is exactly that. [Meet the Clown](/products/clown-chenin-blanc) ## Quick answers **What is Clown wine?** The Clown is Carboniste's still Chenin Blanc from Gimelli Vineyard in the Cienega Valley, bottled in 2023 as a pét-nat that never re-fermented, and released still after two years on its lees and a native restart in barrel. **Is the Clown sparkling?** No. It was meant to be, but it's a still white wine with no residual sugar. **What does Chenin Blanc taste like?** Ours shows honey and lanolin aromatics, bright acidity and a creamy texture from two years on its yeast. **What is a pét-not?** Winemaker slang for a pét-nat that stopped fermenting in the bottle: a little fizzy, a little sweet, and not really sparkling. --- Wines in this post: [Clown Chenin Blanc](https://carboniste.com/products/clown-chenin-blanc)