unfiltered & unfined - the disgorging process
mar 2021
updated jan 2024
When people ask me if they should be scared if wine looks cloudy, my answer is always “are you scared if your orange juice looks cloudy? To be honest I am scared if my orange juice looks clear.”
Fining and filtration are processes used to remove “unwanted” material from the wine before it goes into the bottle. Fining can be done pre or post fermentation. There are a variety of organic and inorganic materials that can be added to the must or finished wine to trap particulates and proteins and settle them out for easy removal. Sounds simple enough but it gets more complicated when you look at the reasoning behind it. Most of the time this is done for the purpose of stabilizing the wine, but it is also an aesthetic choice. People often equate clarity with quality. It is more than possible to make stable wines without fining and filtration. In fact you might find that wines that contain a little extra sediment end up being more dynamic and flavorful.
For our sparkling wines we use two methods to help minimize sediment without forcefully removing it with fining agents or filtration processes. First, we hand-disgorge bottles. Disgorging is the process of removing lees and sediment after bottle fermentation is complete. It is an incredibly labor intensive process, but each and every Pet Project has been carefully bottled by a member of our staff.
We cold stabilize the wines using temperature controlled tanks or by working with the season and placing them in a covered area over a few cold weeks of winter. From here the sediments, lees, and tartrates collect in the neck of the bottle, effectively creating a natural pressure seal. The wine continues to ferment under pressure as it clarifies and after a minimum of 2-3 months, we uncap the bottles (read: explode) to clear out the sediment and release some of the pressure. It’s messy beyond belief. It’s freezing cold. And it’s so much fun. The wine is then topped with reserve still wine of the same varietal to reduce the truly eye-watering level of bubbles and resealed. Select Pét Project wines receive S02 at bottling to minimize the effects of oxygen during disgorgement, with not wine receiving over 25 ppm (far below the organic standards)
The second method we like to call, the natural tank method. This is a single fermentation process in which the wine is added to a tank prior to completing fermentation. The pressurized tank is then locked down in the same way that a pet-nat wine would complete fermentation in bottle and become carbonated. This process skips over the disgorging step as the lees are allowed to settle in tank. The wine is bottled off the sediment, under pressure, using a counter pressure bottler. It’s less messy, but equally as delicious.
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