PIQUETTE 101

Is piquette 'crazy water' or a 'summer wine for everyone'? As interest in lower-alcohol options evolves, this little-known drink could be on the verge of making it big on UK shores

- JOSH DELL

In the autumn of 2023, the government of then British prime minister Rishi Sunak launched a slew of reforms to the British wine industry, described as being made possible by 'freedoms outside of the EU'. Among these was the legalisation of piquette, a light, often fruity, wine-like drink averaging around 5% alcohol, made by adding water to grape pomace (the solid residue left after grapes have been pressed for wine), sometimes with additional sugar or honey, and inducing a second fermentation. So, following the first UK harvest of grapes that can be made into legal piquettes in 2024, is 2025 shaping up to be the country’s big piquette summer?

Chequered past

As sustainable as it is easy to make, piquette is, however, not something you can easily find on the shelves, and it is little known outside certain wine circles, due partly to its relative scarcity and legal status. Historically served to vineyard workers during harvest as a cheap thirst-quencher, there has been a perception that it’s a beverage not to be consumed beyond the vineyard. It has been illegal to sell piquette in France since 1907 and it remains illegal to produce across the EU due to concerns of oversaturation of the wine market.

Such are piquette’s associations with being a lower-tier subset of wine that in Italian, it’s known as acqua pazza (‘crazy water’). In France, to describe a wine as piquette is an even stronger term of abuse than the British ‘plonk’; in 2008, a prominent Cahors winemaker took a local newspaper to court for describing his wines as ‘chemical piquette’. And yet, despite Europe's historical antipathy, there has been a shift. In 2020, the website jancisrobinson.com published a write-up titled ‘Piquette: a summer wine for everyone’, while one US publication described it as ‘the wine of summer 2021’.