Why do winemakers love Pét Nats?

Let’s pop a red cap and get into the bottle with CARBONISTE Winemakers, Dan and Jacqueline Person. These questions go deeper and get bubbly as they share more about CARBONISTE, winemaking, and wine drinking.

Can you tell us more about the Sea Urchin?

Every week we get questions from our sparkling wine fans about what we love about sparkling wine and how we make it. This week we dove into a bottle of the Mackerel, our Pét Nat that tastes oh so good and possesses that coveted Pét Nat funk.

Dan: Jackey, why the hell are we making a Pét Nat?

Jacqueline: Because it tastes good.

Dan: It tastes good. Ya. That is a good answer.

Jacqueline: It’s one of my favorites actually. Before we started we went and tasted the whole gamut of Pét Nats. It’s a wine that is super clean and delicious, but it has that Pét Nat funk too, so you know that it’s a Pét Nat.

Dan: Starting in 2021 we stopped disgorging it so there is more sediment in the bottle. You can tell it is a Pét Nat because there is stuff at the bottom of the bottle.

Jacqueline: But not grapes?!

Dan: But no grapes. Ha!

Jacqueline: Ha ha!

Dan: Just a little bit of sediment. I approach Pét Nat as a bit of an experiment because it’s this cool concept: Can you create a sparkling wine from a single fermentation process as opposed to doing it with two processes as a traditional sparkling wine.

Jacqueline: What is the color of the Pét Nat?

Dan: It’s slightly romato. Starting in 22 and 23 because we’re doing a couple days of skin contact on it. Short skin contact on the Pinot grigio because to me, at least, all the flavor of the Pinot grigio comes from the skins.

As the winemaker, you don’t really get a ton of opportunities to control it. You are giving up control and creating what is functionally a more rustic sparkling wine.

Cheers!

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