Clean and Consistent or Frisky and Feral: Sparkling Wine vs. Pét Nat

By WineBottleMag
January 20, 2025
Clean Consistent Feral Frisky Nat Pét Sparkling Wine
With 0 comments

Clean, controlled and consistent? Or frisky, fun-loving and feral?

Those preferences are at the root in choosing between traditional sparkling wines—which are most often made in the traditional Champagne or tank methods—and pét-nats, the simpler style that’s gaining popularity today.

The former is made all across the globe. From Spanish Cavas, in which secondary fermentation takes place in the bottle, to Proseccos in Italy that are mostly (but not exclusively) produced in tanks, known as the Charmat method, both of these techniques generally include the addition of yeast and sugar to achieve their signature sparkle.

Meanwhile, pét nats—short for pétillant naturel (which translates to “naturally sparkling” in French)—rely solely on the primary fermentation of the grapes for their bubbles. The process, called méthode ancestrale, predates these newer methods and harkens all the way back to humans’ earliest winemaking efforts.

“Pét nat is the original sin,” explains Arnaud Weyrich, the director of winemaking at Roederer Estate in Mendocino County’s Anderson Valley. “It’s the mother of it all.”

Nature vs. Nurture

Yet as the French-born leader of the California offshoot of Louis Roederer, which has been making sparkling wine in Champagne since 1776, Weyrich remains a proud defender of the traditional method. “Méthode Champenoise is the pét nat of grownups,” he says, explaining that it represents an evolution from those original bubbles. “The more you learn, the more you refine your techniques.”

He appreciates that these traditional sparklers must adhere to a “gospel” of rules, which lay a foundation for vintners to express new interpretations, like branches of a tree coming off a main trunk. “For the wine nerds, that makes tasting sparkling wine so interesting,” says Weyrich. “Everyone can use a trick to create a little variation from the original gospel.”

To Weyrich, those guidelines result in more elevated results. “There’s something more serious, more precise,” he says. “Pét nat is more like letting nature take its course.”

In agreement is Eric Hickey, the winemaker and co-owner of Arroyo Grande’s Laetitia Winery, which was founded as a bubbly-only estate called Maison Deutz back in 1982. The Central Coast brand changed names and expanded to still wines in 1995, but Hickey continues to produce seven sparklers per vintage.

Trained by the French, Hickey considers himself a “primadonna of sparkling,” charging that pét nats are just “too dirty!”

With traditional sparkling, says Hickey, “Everything must be perfectly calculated.” He prefers knowing exactly how much finished alcohol and pressure to expect based on the amount of dosage. “You just have a more controlled process,” he says. Consistency is the natural result of such control.

“Pét nat is not that,” says Hickey. “It’s wild. It seems so random to me. I can’t not know what’s going on in the bottle. I’m uptight in that way.”

He’s not dismissing pét nats entirely, noting that his lab manager loves them. “But she likes them dirty beers too,” says Hickey. “I’ve had some tasty pét nats, but I’ve had some really clunky ones too. They both have a place in the market, just like sour and regular beers.”

Fast, Primal and Punk Rock

Solidly in the pét nat camp are Ryan Pace and Natalie Siddique of Outward Wines, in Grover Beach, California. They produce a méthode ancestrale bottling from Pinot Gris each vintage. Though it’s the hardest wine they make—just disgorging the lees (i.e. spent yeast cells) from 1,000 bottles in a day is daunting—they find it the most inspiring.

“There’s no doubt we love Champagne, but it’s about precision and elegance whereas pét nat is more on the alchemy side,” says Siddique. “There is a lot of unknown when you’re making it.”

The couple is all about pursuing natural fermentations based on wild yeasts, without adding sugar. “It’s this really delicate dance of catching the fermentation at the right point—not only the right bubbles, but that it has that crisp and bright element that is super important for pét nat,” she says.

As a small business, there’s an economic advantage to pét nat’s quick turnaround. “You can bottle the wine two weeks after harvest and get it in the market within a few months whereas traditional wines are a much longer process,” says Pace. And because of that, he adds, “Pét nat is a little more like rock ‘n’ roll.”

let adType_678e9b0f14715 = “leaderboard”;
// Create the element
let script_678e9b0f14715 = document.createElement(“script”);

script_678e9b0f14715.innerHTML = `
window.googletag = window.googletag || {cmd: []};
googletag.cmd.push(function() {

var mapping;
// Size mapping for leaderboard ads
var lbmapping = googletag.sizeMapping()
.addSize([1024, 0], [[970, 250], [970, 90], [1, 1], [728, 90]])
.addSize([728, 0], [[728, 90], [1, 1]])
.addSize([320, 0], [[1, 1], [300, 50], [300, 100], [320, 50], [320, 100]])
.addSize([0, 0], [[1, 1], [320, 50]])
.build();
// Size mapping for med rectengle ads
var medrecmapping = googletag.sizeMapping()
.addSize([1024, 0], [[300, 600],[300, 250]])
.addSize([728, 0], [300, 250])
.addSize([320, 0], [[1, 1],[300, 250]])
.addSize([0, 0], [[1, 1], [300, 250]])
.build()
//var lbSlots = [[[320, 100], [728, 90], [300, 100], [1, 1], [300, 50], [970, 250], [320, 50], [970, 90]]];
//var medrecSlots = [[300, 600], [1, 1], [300, 250]];

mapping = adType_678e9b0f14715 == ‘leaderboard’ ? lbmapping : medrecmapping;
googletag.defineSlot(‘/39808611/article_page/article_leaderboard_1’, [],
‘div-gpt-ad-678e9b0f14715’).addService(googletag.pubads()).defineSizeMapping(mapping);
googletag.pubads().enableSingleRequest();
googletag.pubads().collapseEmptyDivs(); //maybe optional
googletag.pubads().refresh(); //maybe optional
googletag.enableServices();

});
`;

//checking to see if script is inserted in the header successfully
if (document.head.appendChild(script_678e9b0f14715)) {
//variable holding the rendering body
document.getElementById(“gptBodySection-678e9b0f14715”).innerHTML = `

googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display(div-gpt-ad-678e9b0f14715); });

`;
}

Ashkahn Shahparnia of Ashkahn Wines on California’s Central Coast takes the analogy a beat further. “It’s the punk rock of wine,“ says Shahparnia, who left a career designing album covers in Los Angeles to start making wine in Santa Barbara County about five years ago. “You’re capturing this really primal, wild form of sparkling wine in the bottle. I just love the freshness, the playfulness, the energy.”

He’s fascinated by how quickly pét nats become drinkable wine. “The immediacy of the process intrigues me,” says Shahparnia, though he doesn’t always pick as early as other sparkling producers. “I allow the fruit to hang and ripen and develop this subtle complexity that I think pays off in the end.”

He refines his process every vintage. Whereas some producers choose not to disgorge their pét nats, allowing the sediment to remain in the bottle, Shahparnia does—despite the difficulties in doing so. “You have to disgorge well,” Shahparnia says. “That’s a skill in itself.”

While Shahparnia has adopted that one customary méthode Champenoise process to ensure his pét nats aren’t cloudy, he doesn’t want to veer into the other traditional rules, which he finds less exciting.

let adType_678e9b0f14e2d = “leaderboard”;
// Create the element
let script_678e9b0f14e2d = document.createElement(“script”);

script_678e9b0f14e2d.innerHTML = `
window.googletag = window.googletag || {cmd: []};
googletag.cmd.push(function() {

mapping = adType_678e9b0f14e2d == ‘leaderboard’ ? lbmapping : medrecmapping;
googletag.defineSlot(‘/39808611/article_page/article_leaderboard_2’, [],
‘div-gpt-ad-678e9b0f14e2d’).addService(googletag.pubads()).defineSizeMapping(mapping);
googletag.pubads().enableSingleRequest();
googletag.pubads().collapseEmptyDivs(); //maybe optional
googletag.pubads().refresh(); //maybe optional
googletag.enableServices();

});
`;

//checking to see if script is inserted in the header successfully
if (document.head.appendChild(script_678e9b0f14e2d)) {
//variable holding the rendering body
document.getElementById(“gptBodySection-678e9b0f14e2d”).innerHTML = `

googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display(div-gpt-ad-678e9b0f14e2d); });

`;
}

So, Which Style of Sparkler Wins?

Like everything wine-related, it all comes down to personal preference.

For pét nat enthusiasts, like Shahparnia, the lower intervention process is about allowing the grapes and terroir to fully express themselves in the wine. “I feel like it loses its soul sometimes when it goes through the length of the traditional process,” says Shahparnia. “That’s pushing down its personality, pushing down its character.”

Though Roederer’s classically minded Weyrich prefers traditional method bubblies, he’s not surprised to see a resurgence of pét nat—which has always existed in his homeland of France—in the American market.

“Méthode Champenoise can get regimented and become very formal,” he explains. “When formality becomes rigid, pét nat is a way to go back to Adam and Eve. You’re naked. There’s a feeling of freedom.”

It’s a tale as old as, well, pét nat. “The old thing becomes the new thing,” says Weyrich. “It’s the cycle of life.”