Pétillant Naturel (Pét-Nat):
Sparkling wines made using the ancestral method, an inexpensive but difficult-to-control technique in which the wine’s primary fermentation is stopped before completing, and a secondary fermentation occurs in the bottle, ending when the yeast cells deplete the supply of residual sugar. No dosage, or sugar addition, is used to start a secondary fermentation in the bottle, and the wine is not disgorged to remove any remaining sediment or lees. While this is a centuries-old method, pétillant naturel wines have more recently become part of the larger "natural wine" trend, which generally entails making wines from handpicked organic grapes, and using native yeasts and only minimal intervention to vinify the wine. Many vintners make pétillant naturel wines experimentally with grapes not traditionally used for sparklers, in regions that have not historically used the ancestral method. Often bottled using crown caps (like a beer bottle) rather than corks, the resulting wines can be cloudy and fizzy, but tend to be less bubbly than other sparkling styles.
