IMAGINE CHAMPAGNE without the pretense or the price and you’ve got the wine of the moment: pétillant naturel. Literally, “naturally sparkling,” it’s abbreviated to pét-nat to make it even more adorable. Yes, it has “natural” in its name, which is enough right there to make it buzzy, but everything about this lightweight, fizzy drink quenches the modern thirst for authentic, handmade, unadorned wine.
Crafted from white and red grapes alike, pét-nat is made by taking unfinished (in other words, still-fermenting) wine, bottling and capping it, and allowing it to complete fermentation in the bottle (that’s where the bubbles come from). It’s the ultimate in lo-fi winemaking, conjuring images of ruddy French farmers in grimy blue coveralls filling bottles by hand.
“It’s Russian roulette winemaking,” says Onward Wine’s Faith Armstrong-Foster, not…
