Tasting Our First Pét-Nat

Our Pét-Nat saga continues: Our First Pét-Nat Tasting.
This year, we had a litle "extra" Chenin Blanc and my husband decided to experiment with a style of bubbly called Pétillant-naturel (natural sparkling), which I blogged about in October: Chenin Pét-Nat.
Chenin Blanc is a white grape variety from the Loire Valley. Kermit Lynch, in his book Adventures on the Wine Route wrote that Vouvrays are prone to pétiller or have an innate natural desire to sparkle.

So, we are helping this process along. We bottled our Pét-Nat on November 3rd (please check out this blogpost: Bottling Our Pét-Nat) with 2-3% residual sugar and crossed our fingers.
We were invited to a pre-Christmas dinner with our friends, the group we call Team Long Pond or the Premier Crew. We decided to take one of our nine (my precious!) bottles to the festivities. This can be risky. We had never opened or tasted any of our Pét-Nat, and here we were having our friends taste it. We opened the bottle and my husband poured small tasting for me so that I

could confirm that no untoward things happened while in the bottle. I gave the "okay" sign and he poured it for our friends.
Bubbles! Unfortunately, the bubbles went away pretty quickly. The Pét-Nat was very acidic tasting to us. This Pét-Nat would make a perfect pairing with oysters.
We could also try to drop some of the acid by putting the bottles in a cold environment. A little more time in the bottle should mellow out the acids and hopefully provide a bit more mouthfeel and mousse. All in all, not bad for the first try. (Giving ourselves a pat on the back!)