dreams on layaway pt 2

Last week Cub and I wrote a piece for Psychic Wines’ wine club newsletter/zine about Brent Mayeaux’s wine, Dreams on Layaway which we also sell in our store. In it we touch on this idea of stolen time, something that we came upon in the car after deliveries. We often sit in the car outside of my house after the day is done (mostly my fault I think). A concept my sister and I actually call “sitting in the car” but means lingering in a place when you know you’re meant to move on to the next.

getting things done, this is the song

Stolen time is just about as simple as sitting in the car. Cub, who is better at writing in an explicative and straightforward manner, blessedly defined it for VISIONS readers but deserves a repeat plus it’s fun to be able to quote your own friend & business partner in your writing, “Stolen time refers to when you have something else you are supposed to be doing, whether that is work, errands, etc, and instead of doing that you pass time doing something rewarding, something probably needed emotionally, usually this means visiting and chatting with others. This is the time-place where natural wine lives. It can happen at any time of the day or night.” We probably came to this while sitting in the car because it’s so closely related to “sitting in the car”.

I also mention that stolen time is really the impetus for our friendship. We had met already, having been offered jobs in the same round of hiring at the restaurant Cellar Door Provisions with similar but different aspirations. Cub I believe wanted to make cheese and I wanted to learn how to ferment foods like they did at Bar Tartine. We both agreed to work front of house positions in order to be in proximity to the madness and inspiration that was producing both cheese and more ferments than any other restaurant at the time. Though we had this in common we did not really become friends and Cub left not too long after to focus on wine at Red & White.

We would see each other sometimes, stopping by each other’s places of work and maybe some other places. One night I got to leave the restaurant early to go buy my coworker Riley a bottle of wine for his birthday because it seemed like the right thing to do. And I had to get to the shop before close. When I say leave early I definitely mean after being there like 12 hours, which was frequent and important to this story because hours like those don’t leave much time for socializing. Don’t feel bad for me, I liked it. When I got to the shop I found Mac and Cub toward the back and explained the situation, that the wine was for Riley, it was his birthday, it needs to be less than $30 probably. Mac helped me with this  (he picked a wild white wine made with some sherry grapes from Andalusia) and Cub opened something for us to drink. At the time I did not know this is what people did in wine shops and I was not planning on staying. In fact I probably needed to get home and sleep because I had a long day ahead of me.

pic from the following night, drinking Mac's rec

We ended up drinking three bottles, talking about skateboarding, definitely not wine. I still remember what the wines were. The first bottle Cub opened for us was Grenabar from Domaine L’Octavin, one of Alive Bouvot’s negociant cuvées. At the time I didn’t know that, I also didn’t know she sourced the grapes from another influential winemaker Remi Poujol or that she went to go pick the grapes at the domaine herself. I did like the wine though and knowing these things perhaps now helps me to understand why I found it remarkable at the time but at the same time does not overpower the initial intimacy. But that’s even maybe looking too far ahead.

The wine served as a tether for us to that time, but in a way helped us let go of the place a little bit. Even though it was a shop for wine the point was that we were freshly and surprisingly together. It was a way for three people who might be interested to talk about skateboarding to finally meet under the circumstances to do it, especially three people so dedicated to working. We were really just kind of doing nothing. You might be tempted to see this play time as being ultimately productive, Cub and I do this business together maybe partially because of that night. And maybe that is an ok way of looking at it, but also if that expectation were placed on us I feel the whole thing would have fallen apart. Because then the time isn’t stolen, you’re doing something for some reason again. Allocating time from one task for another. If you are to consider a goal it is to have the pleasure of being nowhere without a plan and no reason to make one.

blurry pic from a different time at R&W

If you find yourself stealing time, something you probably wouldn’t realize until during or possibly after, you might need to do some spontaneous cookery and of course it is to your benefit to have wine on hand that you have not designated for any specific purpose. Which can feel luxurious, but I think there is something meant to be luxurious about this entire idea. Brent’s wine Dreams on Layaway is good for this purpose and of course the inspiration for the share. In the shop we also have Mayga Gamay from Alice Bouvot, sibling to the Grenabar that started this whole thing. But anything that you are curious about will obviously do and the wine is more important as a memory anyhow. And to maybe think of them as wines that are just around, that are available for dinner just as much as this sweet space. Because, annoyingly but also like many favorite things, you can’t capture it or do it on purpose. Maybe even forget I wrote this, you’ll be better for it.

Just a quick note that we've changed our hours. For same day delivery please order before 2 PM, orders after two will be delivered the next delivery day. We now go out Wednesdays through Saturdays. If you have any questions email rainbowwinechi@gmail.com or DM @rainbow_wines on Instagram. Cheers!

cool julie

photo by mac parsons 

 Why do we identify with certain wines, certain winemakers? 

This is what I found myself wondering as I started writing about Julie Balagny, a winemaker in France’s Beaujolais region. 

One answer has to do with consumerism and brand loyalty; the adage, I shop, therefore I am; the formation of self around the choice made in a purchase. This phenomenon feels as real as ever on the internet. 

But the consumerism answer doesn’t do justice to the meaning behind selecting a natural wine from a small maker. Partially because there’s no marketing team determining how to target your demographic. This also goes beyond values, beyond scale of enterprise. Maybe I’m just so steeped in consumerism that I think there’s something more - that I persist in thinking that the self can be reflected in its relationship to a thing it buys. 

My mind moves to Starbucks. One of Em’s many genius ideas is about teenage girls and the beverage chain, which she also calls ‘the milk store.’ Adolescents use their order at Starbucks as a tool for self formation, exploration and play. Are you into salted caramel, honey almond milk,  vanilla sweet cream? What size? Do you want foam or mist or whip? It might depend on how you’re feeling - Starbucks is the mood ring of taste. My own experience from age 10 - 18 going to Starbucks was like this. I went through phases, developed likes and dislikes, and I never ordered the same thing as my friends. 

Liking her wines does not equal one’s unique Starbucks order, a statement of consumer self, but I do feel invested in Julie’s wines. I didn’t realize just how much I liked her wines until my friends who also work in wine started gifting her wines to me on my birthday. They heard me raving about her wines, when I didn’t realize how much I had talked about them. I looked at my little stack of special wines to save at home a few years ago and realized, wow I have a lot of these wines, and I am so happy for it. Our friend Bradford Taylor from Diversey Wine and Ordinaire and his family gave my husband and me a case of her wine as a wedding present. 

The first wine from Julie that I brought into Red & White (where I was a wine buyer) is 2015 Mamouth, from the Moulin-à-Vent cru. I was able to special order it from New York where it seemed like maybe other buyers were afraid of it. A few of my colleagues liked how 2015 was more sellable to American palettes, that you could offer a Beaujolais that might appeal to someone who likes pinot noir only from central California for instance. But for the most part my wine peers liked to turn up their nose at 2015s, saying they were too big for their more discerning, delicate palettes. There’s this idea that Gamay as a grape tastes like red fruits, like cherry, strawberry, cranberry, not at all or much less so blue or black fruit like blackberry, blueberry, black currant. Mamouth tasted like blueberries and brambles. Mamouth showed this very different side of the grape variety, it had the structure of a bold and juicy Moulin-à-Vent, it may sound geeky, but this sort of novel reflection of fruit and structure was so exciting to me. 

Language means a lot to me so I’ve probably read more than I should into how she named this wine Mamouth -  just what it was, Beaujolais in a bigger body. To embrace that without expressing some hesitation, without needing to impress this particularly masculine brand of snobbishness that sneers at warm vintages, thinking them too lush, too curvaceous, struck me. The illustrations on each of her bottles are done in black and white watercolor, many made by Dauphine Chauvin. Her system of giving some wines discrete names indicates her investment in their expression. Some wines she makes almost every year if the weather allows from a certain vineyard, such as En Remont. Some like Sex Appeal originate in specific vintages, sometimes blends of different sites.

Julie’s wines are always expressing Beaujolais and her cellar. With all the really hot years we’ve experienced recently due to climate change, even a winemaker as experienced and sensitive as Julie makes wines that need a little while to rest before they come into their own. We are cellaring some 2019s now. Yet even with the heat, Julie’s wines never taste like a big Grenache or Carignan, like some of her peers in the Beaujolais and the Loire, they always feel like Gamay.   I think this may have something to do with her management of lees and sensitivity to ferments, but I’m just learning more about this, reading Max Léglise’s Vinification et Fermentation at a snail’s pace to try to understand. 

In the shop right now, we have an outstanding wine from Julie, O Bella Ciao 2017. This is a different kind of vintage to 2015, cooler in general, although this wine also feels fairly full and generous of fruit and body. There’s a bit more airiness and floral quality to this wine than Mamouth, to a wonderful effect. O Bella Ciao is an Italian protest folk song, originating with the Modina, the seasonal rice workers who were women, who faced atrocious working conditions, long hours and very low pay led to constant dissatisfaction. This led to riots in the early years of the 20th century. O Bella Ciao was adapted by the partisans into a world war two anti-fascist protest song. It is a folk song for the people, not the padroni, the bosses. For the modina, O Bella Ciao referred to saying goodbye to your family every day for many hours, having to leave them to face sometimes sixteen hour shifts in up to their knees weeding the rice fields. The lyrics 

Alla mattina appena alzata

o bella ciao bella ciao bella ciao, ciao, ciao

alla mattina appena alzata

in risaia mi tocca andar.

E fra gli insetti e le zanzare

o bella ciao bella ciao bella ciao ciao ciao

e fra gli insetti e le zanzare

un dur lavoro mi tocca far.

Il capo in piedi col suo bastone

o bella ciao bella ciao bella ciao ciao ciao

il capo in piedi col suo bastone

e noi curve a lavorar.

O mamma mia o che tormento

o bella ciao bella ciao bella ciao ciao ciao

o mamma mia o che tormento

io t'invoco ogni doman.

Ed ogni ora che qui passiamo

o bella ciao bella ciao bella ciao ciao ciao

ed ogni ora che qui passiamo

noi perdiam la gioventù.

Ma verrà un giorno che tutte quante

o bella ciao bella ciao bella ciao ciao ciao

ma verrà un giorno che tutte quante

lavoreremo in libertà.

In the morning I got up

oh bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao (Goodbye beautiful)

In the morning I got up

To the paddy rice fields, I have to go.

And between insects and mosquitoes

oh bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao

and between insects and mosquitoes

a hard work I have to work.

The boss is standing with his cane

oh bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao

the boss is standing with his cane

and we work with our backs curved.

Oh my mother, what a torment

oh bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao

oh my mother, what a torment

as I call you every morning.

And every hour that we pass here

oh bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao

and every hour that we pass here

we lose our youth.

But the day will come when us all

oh bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao

but the day will come when us all

will work in freedom.

I read on Bert Celce’s blog wineterroirs.com that “(Julie) says in 2018 for her 10th vintage in the Beaujolais and her 40th birthday, she offered herself the luxury to make zero appellation and bottle everything as vin de France.” The appellation is the institution responsible for overseeing the quality and origin of bottles, and judges wines by taste before granting the permission to label a wine as belonging to a certain appellation. Julie usually submits her wines to the Fleurie and Moulin-à-Vent appellations. When I read Bert’s blog post, before I could even think to explore whether or not it is based in fact, I am off  in my mind with a narrative about Julie being put through the ringer by the AOC for being a woman, for working as she does, for being independent. I’m searching for the resistance of Bella Ciao, thinking I’m finding evidence here. Fuck the fascist appellation. 

I asked our friend Bradford (Taylor, same one), who knows Julie well and who recently visited her at home, what Julie’s relationship to the appellation was like. He laughed when I mentioned this gift to herself for her birthday of taking a break from the AOC. He wrote to me later that he remembered Julie had actually worked on the appellation committee, and found that it was interesting and satisfying work. So my Bella Ciao seemed misplaced. There is no doubt Julie is an anti-fascist, but I tried to locate that in a way that was too broad, took too much liberty. 

 I think we rely on the belief that tasting wines with someone who made them can give you a lot of information about their work. One of the common critiques of natural wine is that it puts too much weight on the story behind the wine, rather than on the taste of the wine itself. I disagree, of course. The wine world’s places so much premium on terroir, the complete environment in which a wine is made, including soil and climate, as well as the people who make the wine. but I do believe that leaning so much on the persona behind the wine puts a lot of pressure on winemakers. 

Still, in an effort to understand the wines I love, I find myself extrapolating as much as I can from my interactions with winemakers, not just what they say but how they pour, what their tone is talking about one wine versus another, their body language. This becomes especially true with winemakers whose first language I don’t speak. I don’t speak French yet, and, although her English is good, I’ve felt like I don’t want to put Julie out by speaking it more than she has to when she’s visiting the US. I met Julie for the first time at Brumaire in 2018. Brumaire is a very beautiful wine fair that’s open to the public that Bradford, Josh Eubank from Percy Selections, Quinn Kimsey-White from Psychic and Matt Coelho from the Woods have put on in March in Oakland, California. 

The day before I arrived at Brumaire in 2018 I saw my friend Mac posted a pic of her at the beach with the caption cool julie. In my muddled memory she is standing in a way like she’s on a surfboard, knees bent, looking happy and suave. I asked Mac for the photo, and it’s different from what I remember. She is standing near, making eye contact with the camera, while pouring from a magnum of wine by Oriol Artigas, and smiling. 

I don’t think I tasted the wines in 2018 at Brumaire, I think I was helping out at the event and failed to make it to her table on time. I got to eat cheeseburgers with Tom Lubbe from Matassa and Julie at Ordinaire in 2018, during the post fair party. It was a great party, very loud and not especially conducive to grilling Julie on her ferments, on her relationship to the AOC, etc. I was even more shy about talking to winemakers than I am now. Julie and Tom could not be more friendly, and keen to chat, but I think maybe I was too star struck. In 2019 I returned with Mac, Em, our friends Ari and Ann Marie, and when we approached her table to taste at the fair she shouted, Les Filles!!! With such warmth it felt like a hug. She came around her table to pour the wines for us with such attention and detail. I honestly might have more to say but need to end this blog post before I collapse. I’ll end with an invitation to try Julie’s wines, if you haven’t, and keep drinking them with me each vintage along with me. <3 

on my dad, Leonard Solomon, generosity, August Moon Restaurant, wine as your hobby, maybe a point of life

 My dad is the reason I care about this stuff, a lot of the time it doesn’t feel like a choice. When asked about what influences my style of service my dad is the first inspiration. His soft spoken generosity was a touchstone before the adage of anticipating the customer’s needs before they knew they had them. My dad’s values made Donnie Madia’s service lectures at Blackbird feel like second nature. And it’s not just me, my sister Jenny also uses food as an entry to her ideas. She is studying to be a dietitian. She’s also an excellent server, we spent three years working together. Sometimes I think it is the main thing our family values though I’m not sure why. Working in this industry, one that my Dad has  never worked in himself, I sometimes feel I’m working in his shadow. For someone who doesn’t often leave the house he casts a pretty big one. I think one of my friends who has never met my dad was asked, “How’s Doug?” when going to pick up food at In On Thai last year. Just because the two of us had eaten there together before.

Part of me is afraid this will be boring but I also know that there is a part of this story in everything I ever do. So I guess before I wrote anything ever again I wanted to talk to my dad about food and wine, how it became the thing of our family. It has never been clear to me because it’s not about sustaining a connection to his familial roots in what is now Lithuania or Russia but something more obscure to me. One thing I did know is that his mom, my Nana was not a good cook and my Papa did not really care either. To attempt to find the source I decided to make him dinner, one that was inspired by his cooking but done in a style more my own and serve him a bottle of wine I hoped that he would like. He’s not necessarily sold on natural wine. 

We sat down to a plate of roasted pork shoulder, beans, and red cabbage, a bottle of Riesling from Jean Ginglinger to accompany. He also doesn’t really talk a lot, like in a small circle he is famously short on words. I recorded the conversation and have listened to it a few times. It’s still a little hard to put a finger on but I will try.

in our backyard before some time between 1990 and 1998

My dad attributes his interest in food as beginning with taking a class called “Boy’s Cooking” in the 7th or 8th grade. Girls took shop and boys did this. Not long after he and his friend Richard would cook dinner for Richard’s family following a recipe in Gourmet Magazine. He cites the difficulty in finding quality ingredients at the time, "the produce section had cans of vegetables in it" however a specialty food shop had recently opened, Convito Italiano. He says they were able to find some exciting things there. This dinner is last major memory for him until after college, when my dad seeks a job with an accounting firm that promises to take him to Paris. He commutes from the city to an office in the suburbs for a while until given the opportunity to go to Paris. My mom and dad who are dating at the time celebrate his opportunity with a dinner at Le Francais.

As he was in Paris for work all of his meals out were taken care of by a cushy expense account, he and his colleagues would regularly go to restaurants with Michelin stars and not have to foot the bill. Things also seemed cheaper then, in my dad’s memory all of the wine was about $30, according to a quick google about $70 today. Coming home I think there was an idea that when you get together with food and wine something exciting happens and it becomes part of the adult life he is building with my mom. Upon his return they “moved to 2300 N Commonwealth which is at Commonwealth and Belden right behind something that at the time was called the Belden Deli Shopping Center. And there was a place in the Belden Deli Shopping Center called Armanetti’s Liquors, there was a guy there whose name was Leonard Solomon.” (this is a quote from my dad). Leonard is a really important person in my family, my dad said that he had a “major impact on a number of ways I learned to do things in life”. He goes on to say, “Leonard was incredibly generous, which I think is one of the more admirable qualities a human being could have and he was very passionate about food and wine.” I think he was partially/mostly/very responsible for the way my family considered socializing. He himself got into wine by working at his family’s drugstore, Solomon’s Drugs, which also sold alcohol. My dad thinks they sold fancy wine, maybe Romanée-Conti. Anyway, before Leonard was at Armanetti he owned a wine and gourmet food shop called Leonard Solomon’s Warehouse. It fell through due to a bad deal, so there he was at Armanetti near my parent’s house talking to them.

Leonard would recommend wines to my dad to buy and eventually they became friends, hanging out once a week. He referred my parents to become members of Les Nomades, a restaurant that at the time required the referral and yearly fee of $1 in order to secure a reservation. Leonard would also invite my dad to dinners hosted by a food and wine society he belonged to, kind of like the Confrérie des Chevaliers du Tastevin. You donned a suit and drank fine wines. One event they attended together was organized around sherry, which is acknowledged as being the most Frasier thing ever. But also an educating and eye opening experience. Leonard’s work in the industry also put him in proximity to winemakers and would introduce my dad when they came to town.

He also introduced my dad to some of his other friends interested in wine, principally Joel and Vivianne Pokorny, doctors at the University of Chicago studying color vision. The three households would meet maybe once a week to hang out and drink wine, mostly at August Moon restaurant. “The best restaurant ever” (also a quote from my dad). August Moon was run by Esther and Gary Wong and served Chinese and Indonesian food. They had two daughters, Shirley and Sandy who were about the same age as Joel and Vivianne’s kids and were also prominently featured in a portrait above the host stand. I looked at it a lot, they were older than me and beautiful, dressed up in beaded gowns for a pageant. Anyway, the adults would always bring wine around a theme. The theme was always “unfortunately” Bordeaux from a specific vintage, winery, or commune because Joel had a passion for wines from the region. I think Esther was empathetic to having kids in the restaurant having raised these girls so she would let us run everywhere while this was going on, even behind the host stand. She would walk us into the kitchen so we could see Gary cook.

Leonard worked also with his wife Sofia at their business, Tekla Inc, Leonard doing wine and Sofia organizing for the cheese and other fine foods since the 70s. They supplied Convito Italiano with cheese, the same shop my dad went to in the mid-70s. Their warehouse is a place in my memory similar to August Moon. I forgot to ask my dad but I would also traverse this space growing up while he was picking up some cheese for a dinner party or Rustichella d’Abruzzo pasta. A lot of my vision of that space is from after Leonard died in 2002. There's also a good article about Leonard and Sofia by Steve Dolinksy in the Reader, here.

Listening to him talk about Leonard helps me understand more why my dad used to walk around Cellar Door with a bottle of beer he was excited about, an opportunity to do something others have done for him. And the beer is exciting, but it’s also that excitement itself is contagious. Which is definitely why I do this. It’s hard to get something explicitly emotional from him, so maybe I’m stretching but it feels like an explanation enough to me. For now.

Some parting words from my dad, words I have trusted for a long time though they’ve been expressed differently almost each time I’ve heard them. The most recent iteration: “Whatever experience you’re having when you’re tasting wine is different from anyone else’s so nobody can talk to you about that it’s just not that complicated you just drink it.” And like I mentioned he doesn’t really like or understand natural wine but here is a list of wines I would serve him:

Jean-Pierre Robinot Les Années Folles $40

L'Octavin Pamina $75

Maison Valette Mâcon Chaintré $60

Jean Ginglinger BIHL-Steiner (again) $45

Jordi Llorens Blan 5.7 $24

Vini Viti Vinci Bourgogne Epineuil ' Vals Noirs' $33

drinking Cantina Giardino w/ my dad, cheers!

We are having another party with Motorshucker in 10 days, on November 20th, from 4-9 PM. We won’t be delivering that day but instead will be serving wine to accompany a paella devised by Mico and some oysters as well. Buen Viaje are returning to DJ and Mac is doing a set as well. Should be fun tickets are here. Also we have even more new wines in from the French south, by Axel Prüfer (Le Temps des Cerises) and Anne Marie and Pierre Lavaysse (Le Petit Domaine de Gimios). We look forward to these every year and feel lucky to have them. A couple hitters from Lazio as well and a new to us vintage of Coule de Source from Jérôme Lambert.

pétillant naturel

 Right now in the store we have my favorite pétillant naturels, or pet nats. Pet nats are sparkling wines made in a method that differs from many others. In addition to the wealth of riches in store, I also found myself reflecting on pet nat because I tried to make one recently. I did not succeed.

To make pet nat, you bottle juice while it is still fermenting, when there is still sugar in the wine. I bought fruit from Michigan, the Chamborcin grape, a red grape. I crushed the grapes with my feet. I let the juice sit on the skins for two nights then pressed. Overnight, I had juice fermenting away in my glass demijohn. The weather was cool, but the fermentation was very active. I tasted the wine every other day (Not often enough I’m sure). It was very sweet at first. It was becoming less sweet quickly. The time to bottle was coming. I tasted it on a Saturday and thought it was time. I’ve never done this before, never seen it done before, had no measurements as to what the potential alcohol of the fruit, no microscope to view yeast through. Still, I thought the wine would be better as a sparkling wine, so I wanted to give it a try. I really thought it might work. I was scared of bottling the wine too sweet because - 1 - what if the fermentation slowed as the weather was cooling, and it didn’t finish eating the sugar, and I had a sweet wine that could start fermenting again when the weather was warm, or maybe not, I wouldn’t really know. And 2 - it might explode from too much pressure if the fermentation was too active in the bottle from too much sugar food to feast on. I tasted it on a Saturday and thought, this should be bottled. The earliest I could do it was Sunday. A month later I opened a bottle, at our sale on Sunday. It was a still wine. I am crestfallen.

box of still wines i made that i'd hoped would be bubbly

Making sparkling wine is difficult. Winemaking is about decisions, and in making bubbly wine, there is even more to decide. Making good natural wine is also very hard. Making good, sparkling, natural wine is, not surprisingly, very challenging. There’s something sort of paradoxical that pet nat is considered an informal wine but to make a good wine requires a high level of craft. 

 

My understanding of the history of the method is as follows. Many hundreds of years ago, before Champagne made sparkling wines, in Gaillac and in Limoux in southern France, people made pet nats, but didn’t call them that. They were called Methode Gaillacoise, at least in Gaillac, and made with regional grape varieties only, like Mauzac aka Blanquette. Jumping forward right til the 1990s in the Loire Valley, Christian Chaussard started experimenting with sparkling wine ferments and what we now call pet nat as a modern phenomenon began. Chaussard’s pals like Thierry Puzelat and many others in their community started making them too, and they became known as wines for friends, by friends. More friends and neighbors started making them in the Loire. They found a huge audience in wine bars in France and abroad. In the US, pet nat became the wine perhaps most optically associated with natural wine. It seems to be the first natural wine many people remember tasting and enjoying. 

 

It is perhaps because of this history that I tend to explain petillant naturel aka pet nat aka in how it differs from champagne aka the traditional method. Pet Nat has undergone one fermentation. Champagne has undergone two fermentations. But the implications of this difference are not self-evident - most significantly that the Champagne method offers more control to its maker than pet nat. In the champagne method, you can choose the amount of yeast and sugar you apply to make the wine sparkle - this is not the case with pet nat. 

The first fermentation is the alcoholic fermentation, when yeast eats sugar and turns into alcohol. Carbon dioxide occurs as a result of fermentation. Eventually, the carbon dioxide will subside, and you have a still wine, which has very little or no remaining sugar, nothing left for yeast to eat (this is how it goes ideally, sometimes things happen differently). The fermentation is complete. 

Using the Champagne method, you take this still wine, and add sugar and yeast in order to start a second fermentation in the bottle. You let these bottles rest for a period of time, usually a few months, could be years, and collect yeast in their necks. You flash freeze the tops of the bottles, in a process called disgorgement, in which you remove the yeast and top the wine with a champagne cork and cage closure. Often you also add sugar before corking it again, to sweeten the champagne. This is called dosage.

The Champagne method takes time, storage space and equipment. But pet nat also requires a winemaker who, typically otherwise makes still wine, to source, buy and store different bottles and closures, ones that can handle higher pressure than still bottles and corks. You need a crown capper and you need extra space. Another challenge is timing. If you don’t just make pet nat (most people don’t) then you are bottling a sensitive wine in the middle harvesting and processing lots of other fruit into juice, your absolute busiest time of year. I think that it also takes a happy cellar to make a good pet nat, as much or more than to make a good still wine. Winemakers that are able to cultivate a balance of bacteria and yeasts in their winemaking environment may have more steady fermentations. 

You kind of have to see into the future when making pet nat, to make an educated estimation of where the wine will be after it has been under closure for several months. It is in the bottle, sealed, and there’s no more tinkering you can do to it. The finality seems intimidating - at least it was for me with my pet nat effort. Winemakers must be intimately familiar with their craft to succeed. 

one corner of bruno duchene's cellar - t'aint a lot of extra space!!

 

It’s easy to see why the wines are so compelling and why they are an entry point for others. Many of us love bubbles. Many people are more familiar with beer than with wine in the US, and pet nat reminds us of some beer like lambic sometimes. Pet nats are often lower or moderate in alcohol because winemakers often pick the fruit for pet nat first, the fruit doesn’t need or isn’t wanted to be as ripe as for still wines. 

 

What makes those we have in stock from Jean Pierre Robinot, Pascal Potaire of Les Capriades and Bruno Duchene so special to me is that they offer complexity that only bubbles bring out. You can’t separate the sense of the still wine from the bubbliness, it is a complete expression. The wine has been crafted very thoughtfully, so that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. With certain sparkling wines, like Champagne, I’d usually rather drink them without the starchy stiff bubbles. I have been known to decant Champagne because of this. The texture of the bubbles of these pet nats varies, although in general I find them pleasant, not piercing. 

All of the wines made by Pascal Potaire at Les Capriades are petillant naturels, and all are disgorged. A winemaker can disgorge a pet nat just as one would a Champagne. This approach is said to limit the variation between bottles - removing the yeast guarantees a more stable wine. To me it is just one of the aspects of the house style of Les Capriades that is focused on vertical energy and electric lift. It is said that acidity is a texture as much as it is a flavor - the layering of the bright acidity of the local Loire grapes like Chenin Blanc and Gamay that Les Capriades sources, combined with the ping of their fine bubbles is a rollercoaster for the palette. La Bulle Rouge, the wine we have in stock, is a red wine that has been fruity sweet with lots of acidity in past vintages. This vintage is more dry, a little less intense contrast than the previous vintages, which is also nice, to have a little less drama. 

My friend the wine importer Zev Rovine has said if he had to pick one producer to drink for the rest of his life, it would be Jean Pierre Robinot - this is because Robinot makes phenomenal sparkling wines, stunning still white wines from Chenin Blanc, some are sweeter and some are drier, and several different red wine cuvees that, while all from the same grape variety (Pineau d’aunis) have discrete identities. You have many methods and styles of winemaking represented at one small winery. Les Années Folles, the petillant we have available, is always a rose though not always made entirely from Pineau d’aunis. Only in years when Jean Pierre has enough red fruit does it not also include some Chenin Blanc. These all-Pineau bottlings speak to me, the crunchy and sharp salt and black pepper spice of the variety pops along with the crackling bubbles. 

There is then Bruno Duchene’s pet nat called Suzette. I love Grenache Blanc, the variety here, but this is less a varietal wine than the Robinot to me, also maybe because Bruno makes a still Grenache Blanc that tastes like salt and bananas and melts my heart. Suzette also tastes a little like salt and bananas but the bubbles bring a softness to the wine, seemingly the opposite effect from the Loire Valley examples. You feel you are in a wildflower meadow, wearing some gentle cotton clothing, you are comforting, the bubbles wash over you like the suds that envelope you after a big wave has crashed in the ocean. 

 

We will be out for deliveries this weekend. There’s lots of new wines in store in addition to these pet nats. As always, don’t hesitate to email us at rainbowwinechi@gmail.com or dm @rainbow_wines with any questions. See you soon!