Piquette rides the wave of freshness

For a while, we stopped promoting it," say Maya Sallée and Nicolas Fernandez of Domaine la Calmette in Cahors. Because this ancestral peasant drink has been banned since 1907, it has gradually disappeared from the countryside.

Although "piquette" is commonly used to describe poor-quality wine, it was originally a fermented beverage made by adding water to the marc.water to the marc, i.e. the dry matter (skins, pips, stalks, even a little grape juice left in the mass) that remains after the pressing of red wine. Piquette is not wine, but it is made from it. It filled the glasses of winegrowers and farm workers. The massive fraud of the time, based on passing it off as wine, led to its prohibition. But what sense does it still make today?

Piquettes are making a comeback in the vineyards. Some estates are making no secret of the fact, hoping to change this outdated regulation. In the Corbières, Alexandre and Laurence They of Château Vieux Moulin offer their "bibine", a cinsault marc and spring water fermented for ten days. The official label announces "aromatized wine-based drink", a legal trick. When the water content is higher, the label can read "cocktail aromatisé à base de produits vitivinicoles".

A real headache

Antoine Arraou, of Château Lafitte, took the same approach in the Pyrenean foothills. A phone call to a friend's winery selling a piquette led to the discovery of the lode: "It's a real headache, it's unfortunate." A strong cherry red sways in one of the 600 bottles he offers. The cuvée is called "Vinò͘t", taken from the Béarnais name meaning "little wine", as whispered to him by local winemakers whose grandparents' parents used to sip this common beverage.

It's a vanished beverage that has everything," says Antoine Arraou. It allows us to ensure the continuity of a product of the vine, into which we put a lot of energy. I'm not interested in sending my pomace for industrial distillation. Besides, it's easy to produce, easy to drink! It doesn't cost much, in every sense of the word." In fact, the drink has an alcohol content of 4.8%, at a time when the wine industry is talking about de-alcoholizing wine when degrees get out of hand. "Another industrial process", he points out.

"Our magnificent late harvest marc naturally calls for this kind of product. It's candied, perfumed with the woodiness of our vines, still moist with sugar to create effervescence in the bottle, like a natural sparkling wine." A capsule caps the neck of said bottle. The bubbles are fine, giving off hints of raspberry jelly. But it's the precision of the juice that catches the eye, built around the woody notes of the marc, in a subtle salinity (discreet as in sparkling water), fine bitters and gentle acidity that remain and refresh.

How is it that these light, thirst-quenching nuggets, right in tune with their time and at a lower price (generally between 10 and 16 euros), don't have a greater resonance? asks Antoine Arraou. Especially since piquette is already an intoxicating success in Japan, the United States and Quebec, which recently authorized it for 2021. "It's an intelligent, historic and constructive drink. Too bad, in France, we're missing the boat because of an administrative block."