Birichino Malvasia Petulant Naturel

Alex Krause and John Locke founded Birichino in Santa Cruz in 2008. Drawing on a combined four decades making wine in California, France, Italy, and beyond, they are focused on attaining the perfect balance of perfume, poise, and puckishness. Sourcing from a number of carefully farmed, family-owned, own-rooted 19th and early 20th century vineyards (and a few from the late disco era) planted by and large in more moderate, marine-influenced climates, their preoccupation is to safeguard the quality and vibrance of their raw materials.

The Malvasia Bianca ‘normale’ serves as the base for this pet-nat, comprising fruit from a vineyard planted in the early 1990s off of the Santa Lucia Range. Finding the méthode ancestrale too unpredictable and variable, they developed their ‘méthode Birichinoise’. When the grapes are pressed, a certain amount of juice is drawn off and immediately flash frozen. Shortly before the still Malvasia is prepped for bottling, they divert the requisite amount before adding the thawed juice portion back to the still base wine before sealing it up with a crown cap. Each bottle is hand filled and capped without disgorging.