(Bloomberg) - Naturally sparkling wines have been made for centuries, and now one of the oldest methods of producing them has made a resurgence.  

Pétillant-naturel (natural sparkling) is a catch-all term for practically any sparkling wine made in the méthode ancestrale, meaning the wine is bottled before primary fermentation is finished, without the addition of secondary yeasts or sugars. (This is in contrast to méthode champenoise, the method used to make Champagne and other more-common sparkling wines, in which a finished wine undergoes a secondary fermentation in the bottle with additional yeasts and sugars).

The ancient method produces a simpler, more rustic sparkler than Champagne, one that is traditionally cloudy, unfiltered, and often bottled with a crown cap (like a beer) rather than a cork. The end product is also unpredictable: Opening each bottle is a surprise, evocative of the time and place where it was bottled. 

Colloquially shortened to “pét-nat,” the wines can be white, rosé, or red in color, making them super-versatile for pairing with a wide range of foods. They vary in carbonation from effusively effervescent to tiny, prickly bubbles. And thanks to those natural yeasts and sugars, most are a little funky but ultimately gulpable, clocking in at around 10 percent alcohol (several degrees lower than most still wines). 

Modern Origins

While the method may be ancestrale, the name pét-nat is thoroughly modern. 

Jorge Riera, the excitable but laid-back wine director at Contra and Wildair on Manhattan's Lower East Side says it sprang up sometime in the ’90s in France’s Loire Valley when two natural winemakers there, Thierry Puzelat and Christian Chaussard, began rediscovering the method of producing sparkling wines in this style.

“Puzelat and Chaussard were running around the Loire calling their sparkling wines ‘pét-nat,’ and from there that name just caught on and took off.” The term is now popular with winemakers far outside the Loire region, in such places as the Languedoc, northern Italy, California, and even New York State, where such wineries as Bellwether in the Finger Lakes and Southold Farm & Cellar on Long Island are making naturally sparkling wines under the pétillant-naturel moniker.