Description: 130+ year old pinot noir vineyard. Method Champenoise. Undisgorged. Note: This needs to be stored upside down to gather the yeast in the neck of the bottle for about an hour before serving. Disgorge/open under water.
Is this a new 'thing?? And you’d need a way of holding the bottles upside down while they mature, and special hardware to open them upside down under water…wonder if they will have another kit that allows you to add a dosage and recork them to get some nice fizz going?
I guess this is a step or two removed from the usual wine ‘kits’ for making wine at home, in that they put it in the bottle for you, but it certainly seems a tad too much ‘hands on’ for most hobbyists.
Yeah - this idea struck me about as attractive as marketing a Do-it-yourself Prostate Exam kit…
The mixing of water and wine bothered me as well, (unless you also buy the optional Feast of Cana water into wine kit), and losing a glass of wine to the process seemed like it should be the responsibility of the winemaker rather than the consumer. Plus the special racks and amount of space a few cases of this sort of wine would take up in the cellar, standing ostrich like with their heads in the sand seems a bit much. And no indication of what the pay-off might be if you do submit to all of this.
FWIW Movia has been doing this for a number of years. I don’t remember when I first read about it but it had to be close to a decade ago.
Also, not sure that disgorgement is required. I make a sparkling wine that I keep under crown cap until consuming and haven’t had any significant issues with the yeast. Store upright the entire time and treat it like home brew.
Brian, harking back to my long past winemaking days, I agree that if you stood the bottles upright before opening, all or most of the sediment would stay at the bottom, especially if you poured carefully. Of course given a choice I’d still opt for one of the first glasses poured…
So do you think this is just a gimmick, or does it have any real virtue?
I guess its an advantage that you get to choose how long its on the lees. still seems like a very strange thing. does all this equipment he’s using (stand, de-corking crowbar, etc) come with the bottle??
I have no clue. I do it because I am lazy and as noted don’t find there to be much impact from the yeast. Even the last glass of the bottle isn’t bad. I find the yeast in home brew to be more of an issue. I can’t explain why this would be as it makes little sense to me.
The early Donkey and Goat Pet Nats we’re always undisgorged and they would give you a piece of that little cardboard tube when you bought a bottle to store it upside down. The pressure keeps any water from getting into the wine when you do it underwater. Any bottle opener works fine. I think you still see some undisgorged Pet Nets but more and more are being disgorged by the winery.
Disgorging is a messy labor intensive process, so doing so would add a lot of cost in a price-sensitive range. Like, this wine is $30. Would it sell as well at $35, if disgorged? This nerdy process of customers doing it at home may be a marketing appeal that makes them stand out - that’s certainly what they’re trying for.
On the practical side, it depends how much schmutz is in the bottle and its quality. If it isn’t problematic, then most people would settle on Brian’s method, like most pet-nat consumers do. If there’s easily stirred up (less dense) murk, then disgorging would be necessary. But, who cares about a little sediment in their wine? The same sort of prissy twit who needs mint jelly to be neon green instead of a beautiful amber?
And no, water won’t get in the wine with their gimmicky technique. It’s this thing called fizzix.
PS - just how far can this sort of do it yourself wine thing be taken? Include a vial of tartaric acid to be added to taste when you adjust the balance to the way you like it?
This may be a bit off topic, but we actually had this wine at a local restaurant a few months ago, having never tasted a sparkling ribolla gialla. While I probably would have been fine drinking it with the lees, it had already been inverted in preparation for disgorgement, so that’s how it went. Just a normal crown-cap lever and a tub of water, no problem, no water in the wine… I don’t recall the details, but it was a perfectly enjoyable drink, reasonably priced for a quality sparkler, and good with food.
It comes across to me as being mostly for the show and its effect on perception rather than an objective improvement in the wine. Or for the savings the producer can realize by skipping disgorgement.
That was my reading also - a sales boosting trick without any other rationale behind it. Happy to be schooled if there is more to this than there appears to be…
