In Praise Of Pet-Nat

The refreshing rusticity of gently sparkling pétillantnaturels is a large part of their appeal.

- Max Allen

For Adelaide Hills winemaker James Erskine, tasting a pet-nat for the first time was a revelation. “I was in London in late 2010,” says Erskine. “Doug Wregg from Les Caves de Pyrene [the natural wine specialist importers] sat me down and said, ‘I’m going to show you some things you’ve never tasted before’.”

One of those things was a beautiful, slightly cloudy, sparkling wine from the Loire Valley. Wregg told the young Australian it was a pet-nat, or pétillant-naturel, a naturally sparkling wine that had finished fermenting in bottle and had not had anything added to it – no acid, no yeast and no preservatives: the carbon dioxide trapped inside the bottle was keeping the wine fresh.

“I had only just started making wine,” says Erskine. “And I knew I wanted to move towards not using any sulphur dioxide, but wasn’t sure how. Here was a wine that answered that question.”

The next year, under his new label Jauma, Erskine produced what he reckons was the first Australian wine to be labelled as a pet-nat: a gently fizzy grenache called Biggles.

“I loved it,” he says. “But it was a bit too weird for most people. In fact, the only one who bought any was Nick Hildebrandt at Bentley.”