Move over White Claw; there’s a new reduced-alcohol sheriff in town. Its name is piquette, and while it has been around since the days of Julius Caesar, we owe its recent arrival in Oregon to a wine store manager from New York.

Have you ever used a tea bag more than once? Then you have a grasp on the basics of making piquette. The ancient Greeks and Romans made the drink by adding water to pomace, the winemaking byproduct comprised of grape skins, stems, seeds and assorted solids. It was a cheap and plentiful beverage favored by the working classes.

The proletarian tradition of reconstituting pomace for the masses reached its height in19th Century Europe. In France, the drink was dubbed “piquette,” derived from piquer, meaning “to prick” or “sting.”

In the mid-to-late 1800s, the French alone consumed millions of gallons of piquette. Indiana newspaper publisher Omar Downey reported in 1914 that, “It is sparkling, full of gas and wins friends whenever tried.”

Piquette eventually faded to the history books, which is precisely where, in 2017, Tristen Gild of the Kingston Wine Company in New York re-discovered its potential.

Gild found a reference to piquette in a 40-year old book titled “The Red and the White: A History of Wine in France and Italy in the Nineteenth Century.” Intrigued by piquette’s low production costs, Gild contacted Todd Cavallo, the co-owner of Wild Arc Farm in Pine Bush, New York.

Cavallo immediately set out to make what may be the first commercial release of piquette in the United States. In 2017, Cavallo soaked batches of pomace in well water for two days. “Then we direct pressed them to tanks to finish fermenting and aging. We blended back 15% of the actual wine to increase the alcohol content and acidity for stability, and re-fermented it in the bottle with local wildflower honey to add bubbles,” Cavallo writes in his website blog.

As news of Wild Arc Farm’s piquette project spread, wineries across America followed suit. “I pretty much stopped counting when the number of wineries making piquette crossed 20,” Cavallo said in a telephone conversation.

Not surprisingly, a minimal intervention grape-based drink that promotes recycling was bound to make it to Oregon.

Cavallo’s piquettes caught the attention of Jack Tregenza, a jack-of-all-trades at Johan Vineyards near Rickreall. Tregenza also makes wine for his new Works in Progress label. Later this spring, Johan Vineyards will release a piquette Tregenza made from re-hydrated Melon de Bourgogne and pinot noir pomace, with a small percentage of pinot noir wine blended back in.

The Johan Vineyards piquette has an earthy, savory quality with gobs of red fruit and a crazy herbal note that reminded me of a cross between German chamomile and dandelion tea. It was agile on its feet, with enough fizz to tickle all the right places. Johan Vineyards’ winemaker Morgan Beck estimates the piquette falls in the 6%-8% alcohol by volume (ABV) range.

“It’s a transitional beverage,” Tregenza says, describing how piquette might appeal to beer and hard seltzer drinkers. Johan Vineyards will sell 750-milliliter bottles of their piquette for approximately $15.

Kimberley Kramer of Kramer Vineyards in Gaston discovered piquette in a magazine article. “We were in the middle of harvest, and I thought ‘why am I drinking all this hard seltzer when I could be making piquette?’”

Kramer’s piquette consists of re-hydrated Müller-Thurgau and Grüner Veltliner pomace. Kramer also mixed in red grape pressings for color, and hard-pressed pinot gris to boost acidity.

I loved this saffron-colored beverage. Packed with flavors of peaches, tangerines and tart grapefruit, it was like downing a cold Stiegl Radler on a hot day. Kramer’s first piquette is approximately 7.5% ABV and will sell this spring in 12 ounce longnecks for $5-$6 and 750-milliliter bottles for $14-$16.

Troon Vineyard in Grants Pass will release a piquette that winemaker Nate Wall describes as “a fair amount of actual juice along with our re-hydrated skins.” The 750-milliliter bottle, which is 55% tannat, will sell for $25.

Wall is comfortable labeling his wine piquette. “I think the ‘definition’ of piquette, as much as one exists, would include adding water and sugar to previously fermented red skins (and possibly stems), adding water to previously pressed white skins while possibly including a sugar addition, or possibly including honey or sugar at bottling to give the ‘sparkle’ in bottle.”

Oregon winemaker Jess Miller of Little Crow Vineyards, who plans to release two piquettes this year, says, we should tip our caps to Tristen Gild for our newfound summer quaffers. “It would never have been a thing without him.”

-- Michael Alberty writes about wine for The Oregonian/OregonLive. He can be reached at malberty0@gmail.com. To read more of his coverage, go to oregonlive.com/wine.

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