The anticipation and fear of crafting the first ever Ricca Terra estate pét-nat was an unnerving experience. They had just taken back some of the gnarly old-vine Zibibbo from a contract and why not venture into the unknown right away? There is no owner’s manual for this aside from friends and family lending an opinion, and you know what they say about opinions! The good news is the experimentation was a few vintages back with some other fruit and the learning from mistakes and even a few successes setup this chapter of sophistication, optimum fizz and delicate flavors. This is the denouement of the relatively short history of Ricca Terra’s exploration into the natural wine world! This is a unique combo of Uva do Troia, Zibibbo and Nero d’Avola creating 750mL of sparkling goodness.
The fruit was hand-harvested, fully destemmed and lightly crushed and completely co-fermented to create a true field blend. The wine fermented over the course of two weeks without any additions and another two weeks past that on skins to achieve the beautiful pink color and light amount of tannin and texture. The wine was fully dry at this point and a small amount of unfermented juice was added during bottling, creating a natural secondary fermentation in bottle. It was bottled without disgorgement, meaning no fining, filtration or sulfur was added either.