Photo courtesy of domainela.com
Pet Nat, short for Petillant Natural (Natural Sparkling Wine) is one of our favorite kinds of natural wine. A Pet Nat is distinguished from Champagne in that nothing at all is added to it. The fermentation starts in a tank and then the juice is transferred to bottle where it finishes fermenting. The bubble is usually softer and finer than in Champagne, more natural if you will. The wine doesn’t need sulfites added to it because instead the gas inside the bottle acts as a natural preservative (sulfites are used as preservatives in most wines).
As the yeast finishes converting the natural sugar to alcohol, it dies and falls to the bottom of the bottle, just as it does with Champagne, and the winemaker turns over the bottle gradually, letting the yeast settle in the neck. It is then disgorged to get the dead yeast out, often by hand, topped up with a little more wine from another bottle, and recapped. This process is really cool to watch, so we shot this short video of Dante, the winemaker for Colombaia in Tuscany, Italy doing some hand disgorgements. A very small quantity of this rosé just arrived into New York city, and you can drop by Osteria Morini to try some, they’re pouring it by the glass!