Perfect Panna Cotta Pairing

My father likes Moscato D’Asti, so when I went home recently for a visit, I brought a variation on the usual offering: Elio Perrone’s Bigarò 2009 ($25), a frizzante rosé wine with very low alcohol (5%) because the grape must is only partially fermented. Because of this, too, some of the grape sugar remains in the wine, for a lightly sweet effect. The rosé color comes from 50% Brachetto grapes, a black Piedmont variety that is blended with the white Moscato variety. The Brachetto also lends notable raspberry and bramble aromas to a wine that would, as Moscato alone, be floral with light nectarine or tropical aromas, but there is also a distinct grape juice flavor here. It’s Moscato d'Asti with a wild streak.  

Meanwhile, my mother was testing recipes on us—one of the best reasons to go home. She happened to choose a Blackberry Buttermilk Panna Cotta with Blackberry Compote that was just a little less sweet than the wine, and whose berry flavors and slight buttermilk sourness played off the wine beautifully—the kind of pairing where the wine and the food each create nuances in the other that weren’t there before. It couldn’t have happened better if we’d planned it.

Comments

[Katherine]

Yes--Pétillant Naturel is a fairly new trend in making sparkling wine, which allows no addition of yeast, sugar, or anything else during winemaking. "Pet Nat" wines are different from Champagne in three main ways: 1. Sugar and yeast are added to the wine in the Champagne-making process, to cause the second fermentation in bottle that creates the bubbles; 2. Champagne is made with two fermentations, whereas Pet Nat wines have only one; 3. Champagne is fully sparkling, whereas Pet Nat wines are pétillant, which is a softer bubble of lower pressure that causes the wine to feel creamier than Champagne, rather than exploding in the mouth. Like Champagne, Pet Nat wines can be dry or sweet due to residual sugar remaining after fermentation, and white, rosé, or even red.

Pétillant Naturel wines are starting to be produced all over France, having originated (as far as anyone knows) in the Loire Valley, where Montlouis as of 2007 has a legal protection for a wine called Pétillant Originel. These wines are difficult, technically, to produce, and are still hard to find in the U.S., but with the rise of ultranatural wines, you can bet we'll be seeing more of them. (The Elio Perrone mentioned in the original post is not a Pet Nat wine.)

[Aldo]

can you tell us what Pétillant naturel wine are about?