The Oldest Way to Sparkle Wine

The most convincing evidence that we’ve read about says that the French started sparkling wine in the late 1600s. Very soon after that, either they or the English (believe it or not) came up with the current method that the French use, now known as the Méthode Traditionnelle, which involves inducing a controlled secondary fermentation in the bottle to sparkle the wine once your primary fermentation is done. However, as we have intimated, this method is not the way wine was originally sparkled.

Before the Traditional Method, there was what is now called the Méthode Ancestrale. In the Ancestral Method, winemakers would bottle their wine while their primary (and only) fermentation was still going on. They would then cork the bottles while slowing and halting the fermentation by chilling the bottles down. As you can imagine, this practice required a lot of timing and a little luck to reduce the amount of bursting bottles and flying glass — hence the motivation to develop an alternate, safer method.

The Méthode Ancestrale did not go away, though. Winemakers (and especially natural wine winemakers) still use it to make Pétillant Naturel wines. Pét-Nats are unfiltered sparklers whose bubbles are usually softer than their Traditionelle cousins. Plus, they feel more “authentic” to some winemakers.

They’re also fun, which is why, now that we’re deep into spring, people have been coming into the shop looking to get their Pét-Nat on. We hear you and provide this Pétillant Naturel tasting for Wine Wednesday. Please join us for our free, walk-up tasting any time between 5:00 and 6:30 PM for some modern, ancient sparklers.