It was fun!

Browsing through my RSS feeds one morning I spotted an article about a type of wine called piquette. What was that? The article was about a piquette being produced by the biodynamic Wild Ark Farm in New York’s Hudson Valley. This, I thought to myself, looks like fun. I forwarded the article to Troon Vineyard’s winemaker, Nate Wall, with a simple note saying exactly that, “this looks like fun!” 

Nate obviously agreed as here we are one year later releasing our own 2019 Troon Vineyard Piquette!. I’m sure you’re asking the same question I had, “what is piquette?”

Only in recent history has wine become an elite product requiring certified sommeliers to guide you through encyclopedic wine lists. In the past, wine grapes were just another agricultural crop that required lots of sweat and delivered little reward. Farmers couldn’t (and still can’t) afford to waste anything. Winemakers would press off their best juice to use for wines they would sell, then re-hydrate the remaining pomace, add some sugar or honey, let it soak, and then ferment that for a daily quaff for their workers and themselves. Light in alcohol and lightly sparkling, piquette was frugal farmer fizz. Piquette is anything but a “serious” wine.

The trick here was that none of us had ever tasted a piquette. That’s a very odd experience as normally we would have tasted dozens of wines made by other producers as we tried to deeply understand a variety or blend before we launched off on our own project. Not this time. Nate put together a plan and off we went. 

That plan was to use the pomace from our whole-cluster pressed white grapes (marsanne and vermentino) and red grapes (tinta roriz, primitivo, tannat) destined for rosé. We also used pomace and juice from another new Troon Vineyard sparkling wine, Pét tanNat, a pét nat made from 100% estate tannat. A relatively small amount of water was added to the pomace that remained in the press and was allowed to soak overnight. Without any additions, we naturally achieved an alcohol of 10.5% - obviously, there was plenty of juice left in the press. Then the pomace was pressed again and the juice was collected in a stainless steel tank, where a native yeast fermentation easily started. When a small amount of sugar still remained in the fermenting juice, we quickly bottled it under crown caps to complete its fermentation in the bottle. What makes this tricky is that you have to bottle this type of sparkling wine right in the middle of harvest - a time of year that is already busy enough! On the day the wine is ready to be bottled, it has to be done right now, tomorrow will be too late. When fermentation completed we did a light disgorgement, only removing the heaviest lees so there is a light haze remaining. As you would expect from the red grape skins, there is a tannic edge to the bright, fruity flavors of our Piquette!, which is very different from our soon to be released pét tanNat. For me, it reminds me of some crazy combination of a fresh peach juice Bellini, cider and Cava - sparkling, bright fresh and fun.

Our 2019 Piquette!, Estate, Applegate Valley was fun to make and is equally fun to drink. What fun is that!

Please watch this video as Troon Vineyard winemaker Nate Wall describes how we made this wine: