Rachel Signer - You Had Me at Pet-Nat: A Natural Wine-Soaked Memoir

2018

I N WINEMAKING, A SUPPOSEDLY SIMPLE TASK IS GENERALLY AN EXCELLENT opportunity to make a fool of oneself.

A soft wind rippled through the warm March afternoon. Overhead, a pair of black cockatoos squawked loudly, careening over the valley behind the winery. Shuffling around in my newly purchased waterproof Rossi boots, made in South Australia, I rearranged my stance as I prepared to transfer the juice from a barrel to a vat full of spent grape skins. We were making piquette , a low-alcohol wine, traditionally served to vineyard workers in France, derived from already pressed grapes topped up with fresh juice and water.

Maybe like this? I held the hose in one hand, my legs wide apart. Wildman always did it so quickly, I hardly had a chance to observe him. And I hadnt witnessed this technique in France, when Id had my stint picking grapes at Domaine Mosse last year. Most wineries would simply use a mechanical pump to transfer fresh juice or finished wine from one vessel to another. Nearly every winery in the world would do it that way. But here at Lucy Margaux, we did things differently. Pumps, for whatever reason, were against Wildmans ideology. Too aggressive on the wine, he said, succinct as always in his explanations.

Leaning down, I placed my lips over the hose opening and inhaled; my chest tightened. Wasnt siphoning a basic survival skill? Shouldnt I have learned it in Girl Scouts, back in Virginia, instead of making smores all those years? Squatting to lower the hose to allow the juice to flow into the bucket, I glimpsed the pale liquid filling the part around the barrel opening. It was coming! I lowered and sucked, lowered and sucked, trying to copy the maneuver Id seen Wildman do with complete fluency.

Heeeeeuuuuuuuuuh! I inhaled with all the lung capacity I possessed, trying to work with gravity. Gravity, what did I know about gravity, anyway? I, who only took physics in university because it was a required course. Who wrote a final paper about snowboarding because I knew it would just pass me. But surely I could do this taskcouldnt I?

As a freelance journalist who had spent years writing about wine, I thought I had an idea of how it was made. Countless press trips and tasting seminars had given me a strong sense of the basics: pick grapes, destem or not, jump on them or ferment carbonically, macerate grapes or press directly, do punchdowns, transfer free-run juice into barrels or tanks, press the grapes again and again and again. But my two-week experience in France the previous year had shown me the reality of this workI saw how much logistical coordination, technical prowess, and intuitive knowledge of fermentation went into making a stable, drinkable wine. Especially given that these were natural winesfree of any corrective additives and free of or very low in preservativesthere was no room for error.

Now, I had somehow waded back into the natural winemaking trenches, and the stakes were different. That was partly because of my intimacy with the winemaker, and partly because I was making five barrels of my own wine, plus a small batch of ptillant-naturel , a rustic sparkling wine made without any added yeasts or sugar (a.k.a. pt-nat). This was not an internship. This was, quite suddenly and surprisingly, my life. Nothing Id experienced in my eight years of living in New York as an academic, writer, or wine salesperson could have prepared me for making natural wine in Australia.

I threw down the hose and marched into the winery with an air of exasperation. Wildman was directing the interns in sniffing the ferments, looking for potential problems. Look for Samboy chips, said Wildman. Thats volatile acidity.

Uh, what are thoseSamboy chips? Sev, who was originally from France and managed one of my favorite Manhattan wine bars, the Ten Bells, asked Wildman what we were all wondering.

Vinegar chips. Ill buy you a pack so you know the smell, Wildman replied, standing in the center of the massive shed, while the others hovered over red plastic tubs of fermenting grapes, which we had picked that week. And look for banana and nail polish, thats ethyl acetate. And reductionmatch sticks.

Wildman walked purposefully toward one vat, where Raphael stood wearing a concerned expression. Raph, who was staying with us for a month from London, where hed established himself as one of the citys best sommeliers, said he wasnt sure if the grapes smelled all right. Never mind my siphoning task, Wildman needed to be absolutely sure that every batch of fermenting grapes smelled good. Without the option of correcting the wines using something purchased from an oenological warehouse, nothing was more important than ensuring healthy ferments.