Description
Wine Details
PetMex (Petnat-Mexicano) comes from a vineyard of 40-45 years old, cultivated in rainforests and free foot,
composed of a mysterious grape variety that remains unidentified. The vines are planted near the Pacific Ocean at 300 meters above sea level in sandy loam soils and granite in the area of San Antonio de las Minas, Baja California.
Alcohol Grade: 12.5%
Aging/ Vinification: The grapes are harvested by hand, destemmed, and pressed directly. Fermentation is with wild yeasts, the wine is bottled before the end of this process to go through a secondary fermentation by ancestral method. No filtration or no added SO2.
Best to have it: 5-8ºC
Size: 750 ml
The Winery: Bichi Wines
Mexico has a centuries-long history of winemaking that has mostly gone under the radar. Spanish conquistadores planted vines in the early 1500’s, before both Chile and Argentina, and Baja California represents about 90% of the vines in the entire country due to the ideal climate and geography. Brothers Noel & Jair Tellez, with the help of Chilean (by way of Burgundy) winemaker Louis-Antoine Luyt, are producing amazingly fresh and energetic wines from very old, recently recovered vineyards of Misión (aka Listán Prieto), Rosa del Peru (aka Moscatel Negro), Tempranillo and Carinena, among other varieties. Bichi means “naked” in some parts of northern Mexico, and for Téllez and Luyt, it thus seemed like an appropriate name to give their new natural wine project.
Based at the Téllez family ranch in Tecate, just over the border from California, Bichi farms 10 hectares of their own Tecate vineyards biodynamically and collaborates with a growing family of organic farmers working vineyard land in Tecate and around Valle de Guadalupe. The majority of the vines are head-trained and all are dry-farmed, hand-harvested, fermented with native yeast, and aged in neutral barrel or vat so that the emphasis is on each wine’s Mexican terruño.
