A bright, crisp, light, fresh and delicious sparkling rose wine, floral with notes of citrus and golden raspberries. This is a beautiful and well-balanced wine with a nice tension between flavors, acidity and moderate alcohol. A hint of yeast left from the wild yeast fermentation brings a nice mouthfeel. Easy to drink, soft bubbles, can be consumed right away.

This wine is alive: unfined, unfiltered, with no added sulfites, full of active wild yeasts, it will continue to slowly ferment in the bottle, giving different flavor profiles as maturation progresses over the years.

“Pétillant Naturel” is the French word for natural sparkling wine, a wine that is naturally fermented in bottle. Unlike Champagne, there is no addition of yeast or sugar: it is bottled before the fermentation in tank is complete, a tricky call to make, as bottling too early may produce too much bubbles (and risks of exploding bottles), and bottling too late will produce a flat wine. This involved and somewhat unpredictable process makes it a perfect fit for small scale artisanal wineries. It is also the oldest way of making sparkling wine, discovered by accident in 1531 by the monks of the Abbaye of St. Hilaire in France. This so-called ‘ancestral method’ produces a sparkling that retains all the fruit flavors from the grape, and became very fashionable in France in recent years.

Our estate fruit is dry-farmed and the vineyard is not tilled. Cover crops are used to improve the soil’s texture and richness. Every task is done by hand with minimal intervention of machinery. There is no use of insecticides or pesticides in the vineyard.

At the winery, we respect the integrity of the wine by using a low intervention approach. Sulfite is never used. We age the wine in neutral barrels to let the fruit from each year tell its story, the story of that year in the vineyard.

Wine Type: Sparkling Rose
Varietal: 100% Petite Sirah, a grape that finds its origins in southern France and is considered a rare varietal, with only 10,000 planted acres worldwide, mostly in California.
Appellation: Redwood Valley (California)
Vineyard: Powicana Farm, certified organic by CCOF.
Altitude: 900 feet

Winemaking: Pressed and partially fermented in steel tank using wild yeasts from the vineyard, and kept cold over the winter. Bottled in spring, with fermentation restarted in the bottle. Unfined, unfiltered, no added sulfites.
Harvest Date: 09/10/2019. Brix at Harvest: 19.2. 
Bottling Date: 03/29/2020. 
pH 3.2, TA 7.1g/L, Residual sugars 4g/L, Alcohol 11.5%.
Production: 252 cases.

Bottle size: 750ml.

Serving: Put the bottle in the refrigerator a few hours before serving. Serve at 40-50°F.
Food pairing: Perfect for celebrating or even an afternoon barbecue!

Storage and shelf-life: Store in a dark place, at a temperature between 50 and 60°F.
This is a living wine which will continue to slowly ferment and give out new flavors over time.