2020 Rock Juice X Purity ‘Pop Rocks’ Pétillant Naturel

Region: Sonoma Coast + Sierra Foothills < California

Grapes: 70% Pinot Noir, 30% Viognier

Vineyard/Cellar Stats: Organic farming; some carbonic fermentation on the Pinot, then foot tread and fermented on skins for 10 days before gently pressing; Viognier fermented separately then added to Pinot juice to co-ferment for another 10 days before bottling under crown cap; hand-disgorged, topped off and re-capped; no added So2; 11% ABV; 30 cases 

Winemaker: Melissa, Patience + Noel!

This is the second vintage of our wine, a collaboration between Rock Juice and the amazing Noel Diaz of Purity Wines!  Trying to recreate the magic of our first vintage, we decided to target a Pinot/white co-ferment fizzy pink Pet’Nat again.  Noel found some beautiful Pinot from a small Sonoma Coast vineyard that had a little Viognier interspersed, and let it start fermenting carbonically. Then I sanitized my feet and had a solo dance party on the grapes, since Patience left me for LA. Again, the juice went from pretty pink to deep ruby, so we added more Viognier juice (from the organic Ruff & Ready vineyard Noel farms in the Sierra Foothills) and let the juices mingle (co-ferment) for another 10 days. Then we bottled, and let them rest up upside down to allow the yeast cap to form in the neck. Finally, Patience returned to help hand-disgorge (and mad-scientist like top off the bottles) with our team of 6 helpers on a fine-tuned assembly line -- we learned some lessons after last year, like chilling the bottles to prevent total volcanic eruption upon disgorging.  

A lot of time and love went into these bottles, but we couldn’t be happier with the result - the juice is a pretty magenta color, with just the right amount of fizz.  The fruit is sweetly spicy, with red-hot cinnamon and cloves and tart cranberries. It tastes like Christmas in a bottle!