The Rise of Pét Nat

An Ancient Style of Sparkling Wine Resurrected for the Modern Drinker

By Matt Austin

Popular depictions of sparkling wine have long been tied to Champagne, a luxury beverage with a long and storied tradition, often reserved for holidays and special occasions. In recent years, however, a style based on an even more ancient production technique has emerged to take sparkling wine in a new, and more playful direction.

The bubbles in your sparkling wine can be created in several different ways. Many inexpensive mass marketed bottles are "force carbonated," or injected with carbon dioxide, just like a can of soda. Higher quality bottlings, however, tend to trap the carbon dioxide that is a natural byproduct of the fermentation process in order to bring effervescence to the wine.

One way this can be done is to ferment the wine in pressurized stainless steel tanks, an efficient and inexpensive technique known as the "charmat method" that is employed for Prosecco. In contrast, the finest examples of sparkling wine, such as Champagne, typically undergo a more labor-intensive process where the fermentation occurs in the bottle itself and the carbon dioxide is trapped by a crown cap or cork.

Grosgrain's Lemberger pet nat

Champagne is made in a style known as the "traditional method" by first fermenting a base wine to dryness in tanks or barrels and then bottling the wine with additional yeast and sugar to fuel a second fermentation that will occur in the bottle, creating the bubbles that we all enjoy. The identity of the creator of this method is a controversial topic, for years having been attributed to the monk Dom Pérignon, but regardless, it is widely believed to have originated in the late 1600's. It is generally accepted, however, that the first sparkling wines were made in Limoux, France, in 1531.

Those wines are still produced today under the appellation Blanquette de Limoux and are made by bottling wine before the fermentation has completed and while there is still sugar and live yeast in the wine. The fermentation, which is initiated by native yeasts present on the skins of the grapes, then completes in bottle, trapping the carbon dioxide and creating a sparkling wine. Accordingly, these sparkling wines can be created without adding anything to the wine at all, something that is key to the resurgence of the style, and which became known as the "méthode ancestrale."

As the traditional method of sparkling wine production took hold in later centuries, only a few isolated regions of France kept this style alive, but the modern renaissance is credited to group of producers in the Loire Valley who began to research these techniques and apply them to their own wines in the 1990s. The Loire Valley has long been at the center of the rapidly growing "natural wine" movement, which is a reaction to the increased use of chemicals in the farming of vineyards and additives in the winemaking process, which can be used to create wines that have mass appeal but are also more uniform and perhaps lack character and real connection to the land.

Redubbed "pétillant naturel" ("natural sparkling" in English), and abbreviated to "pét nat," producers of this sparkling wine style tend to source organic or biodynamically farmed grapes and add as little as possible to wine, while also taking nothing away, often leaving the spent yeast in the bottle, something which would be removed from Champagne through a process known as disgorgement. What results is typically a hazy or lightly-cloudy wine, with a unique character often described as "funky" due to the retained aromas of bottle fermentation, making these sometimes reminiscent of sour beer styles.

The wines are low in alcohol (10-12%) and drier than champagne, which generally has sugar added in the form of a dosage prior to release, while also having a lighter and less persistent carbonation. These tend to be sealed with a crown cap as opposed to a cork, so you can open the bottle just as you would a beer. Most sparkling wines are made from a small list of grapes, such as Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, but producers of pét nat tend to be more adventurous, often employing aromatic white grapes like Muscat or Gewürztraminer, or red grapes not typically employed for sparkling wines like Cabernet Franc or, in the case of my own pét nat, Lemberger. The character and style of pét nat production can vary greatly by producer, making this a category ripe for exploration.

Kelly and Matt Austin

Great as an aperitif, these are decidedly not wines to be reserved for special occasions and they are inexpensively priced compared to champagne. Best consumed in the immediacy of their youth, these don't require aging to be enjoyed. The style has grown immensely in the United States over the past decade with now dozens of producers contributing quality examples. Initially found primarily at natural wine focused bottle shops and restaurants, these are starting to creep into the mainstream, so get in on the pét nat revolution and try one today!

Matt (former attorney) and Kelly (fashion designer) Austin founded and run Grosgrain in Walla Walla. Matt got his Associate of Science, Viticulture and Enology at Northwest Wine Academy, and was a winemaking intern at Savage Grace Wines and Efestē. He became assistant winemaker at Darby Winery, then cellar master at Dunham Cellars. grosgrainvineyards.com

March 2022