That would be surprising to me. I went back and looked at my tasting notes. Yeasty, beer like, malty, strawberry husk, rhubarb all were used. As a wine geek, I thought if it as a nice novelty but nothing you would really go out of your way to track down. None of my non geek friends wanted anything to do with it. I’ve seen it on a few wine lists in restaurants in the NJ/NY metro area but doesn’t seem mainstream at all. Almost never for sale in bottle shops.
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I drink little sparkling wine. Just doesn’t do much for me. To paraphrase Cole Porter, I get no kick from Champagne.
Pet Nats are different.
Particularly, I have enjoyed the Pet Nats of La Garagista, a Vermont winery with Deirdre Heekin at the helm. Her Pet Nats are outstanding and one of the few Vermont wines worth seeking.
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Mainstream ≠ wine geek crowd. Every hipsterized wine menu in the country has a pet nat on it, or maybe Kansas City is the pet nat capital of America. Every 1 million+ city has at least one natty wine-focused store or a store with decent natty wine focus. That’s my perspective. Tasting notes have nothing to do with it. They are very marketable.
Perhaps in NY/NJ, you just have so many good stores with traditional focus you don’t see them everywhere, but they are very much around my local shops.
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We sell way more Pet Nat than Champagne instore.
And the opposite online.
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Wow! Great intel, thanks for sharing.
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It does seem like a lot of folks here in Napa are making them as a tasting room-only offering, since it’s also kind of a novelty (in a good way) for nearly everyone, and who doesn’t want to try something special, weird, different, and limited when they’re enjoying their time at a tasting?
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For my palate, seems like a wine only a wine geek could love. Not sure how it appeals to the masses but good on them. Maybe it’s the new craft beer
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I think that these types of wines are attractive to non-wine drinkers, because they are out of the ordinary and ‘different’
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My experience is that “the masses” love wines that are delicious, especially if you don’t portray them as weird and just tell them what to expect, taste-wise. Ironically, it can be harder to get wine geeks to try wines from out-of-the-ordinary appellations/techniques, because they know enough to be sure they won’t like them.
When I worked retail in Nashville, for example, we sold cases and cases of Camillo Donati’s sparkling+skin-contact Malvasia. It was non-disgorged (though not pet-nat), so it was hazy and orange—but that wine is so easy to love once you pop the crown cap.
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Champagne - The Greatest Thread on Berserkers
I’ll just leave that link there. We hit all price points, natty sparklers, method, young, old, domestic, foreign, it’s not really just champagne. It’s welcoming, fun, we know a bunch of each other’s preferences and so can weigh whether a reco is a good fit for this or that person’s palate. Really friendly group. Tons of phenomenal information and great recos, high and low.
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For me, these 2 points are exactly what I enjoy about Pet Nats. I find it fun to see winemakers express creativity and it seems that Pet Nats are becoming an outlet for that. I’ve had some really funky Pet Nats but also some really great bottles.
I know it’s ‘col fondo’ rather than ‘Pet Nat’, but @Saul_Mutchnick’s Racing Gloves is a house favorite. Story of Soil did a Gruner Pet Nat last year that’s pretty darn delicious. And Bichi’s Pet Mex is a really fun bottle to try, if you can find it.
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Loved your col fondo, Saul.
Pet nats and orange wine in hipster restaurant scare me probably more than they should.
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In Italy they’ve always been mainstream if you think about it.
They are easy and cheap, and when i’m in the mood for something glou glou i’d go for it.
I really enjoy lambrusco from Crocizia (7-8€ from the producer) and also the malvasia from podere cipolla.
Lambrusco is a wonderfully food-friendly wine, with the ability to pair well with rich and light dishes alike. It works with spicy foods and aromatic ones too.
And with bread and prosciutto or salame, i can’t think of a better pairing!
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I’m going to a party for my LWS that’s all focused on pet nats this weekend, and I’m looking forward to it. In line with the thread so far, I think pet nats can be anywhere from sour beer adjacent to delicious easy drinking wines, and I’m fine with all of it, but I prefer fruit driven styles. I’ve had worse experiences with wine marketed as ‘orange wine’ than I have with pet nats, and I’ve started ordering a sparkler btg when I go out (if my table isnt getting a bottle) since they’re more enjoyable for me than other selections on a cookie cutter btg list.
To the point that they’re easy to get to market and can sometimes sell at a higher price point than still wine, I think that’s really important, especially for getting local wine visibility and onto shelves. Fizzy drinks are fun, and if pet nat is a way of getting someone in the door of a wine shop, then I’m all for it.
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I like the category. I enjoyed most of the Pet Nats i had. I take a Pet Nat most summer days over a Rosé…
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I think there’s a simple split style wise, disgorged vs not disgorged.
At least an effect on what we get in the glass.
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We’ve made a couple of pet nats with a couple of grape varieties that we grow over a few years time. In all cases we do not disgorge at all. Our chenin blanc pet nat is pretty tasty every time we make it and is approachable at a young age. When we tried turning chardonnay into a pet nat it tasted like a beer for 2 years… hardly a quick turn around. That beer flavor subsided and our 6 year old chardonnay now tastes like a decent BdB sparkler. The winemaker at Bel Lago winery(MI) makes a nice auxerrois-chardonnay pet nat that is disgorged and very delicious. In my mind not all grapes make a delicious pet nat wine that one would like immediately. In our experience chenin blanc fits well within the pet nat style whether you disgorge or not.
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I definitely rate Michael Cruse’ pet nats as great. His Valdiguie is stunning and since I’ve never made to an Ultramarine allocation, I’m totally happy to drink what he makes when exploring new options.
Nice description of his approach:
The petillant natural wines are a beautiful departure from what many associate, or expect, from this style of wine. Crafted from single vineyard plantings of Valdiguie and St Laurent, the pet-nat’s are produced from grape juice only with nothing else added. They have a higher carbonation than most, typically around 6 bars of pressure, and with 6 grams or below of residual sugar. Finished alcohols are in the 11.0-11.5 range. The wines are also disgorged, so they are bright, clean and show great purity.
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Your insight on the profile and arc of a Chardonnay Pét Nat is super interesting @Gary_Schulte. I made two Chardonnay Pét Nats, one in 2018 and another in 2019. The 2018 had that beer-like flavor as you describe, so we left some RS in the 2019 to prevent that. It worked. But, perhaps I should revisit the few bottles I have of 2018 in the cellar to see if it’s made it through the “dumb phase” and blossomed into something closer to a BdB.
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