Modern Sparkling Wine Production-with Dan Person of Carboniste
Dan Person teaching the art of disgorgement by hand
As early as the 1860s, sparkling wine was being produced in California and often made by immigrants. Much of California’s sparkling wine was sold as ‘Californian Champagne;’ a gaffe that later served as a means to influence France to allow the ‘grandfathering’ of the use of the word Champagne by some Californian producers. This means that certain Californian wineries are allowed to label their wine as Champagne, despite several lawsuits and an internationally signed treaty now forbidding this practice. Producers such as André, Korbel and Cook’s still take advantage of this provision.
Innovators of the Classic Beverage
Although sparkling wine is made all over the world, winemakers and consumers alike often look to France’s Champagne as the gold standard, even mimicking their methodology, and using the term ‘traditional method’ (méthode traditionelle) in place of méthode Champenoise. This is because the French were the originators of bottle-fermented sparkling wines, and Champagne is the global standard to which people aspire to. With Champagne occupying a premium price position, many have tried to capitalize off the fame of this name.
Is it any wonder why many people assume any sparkling wine to be Champagne? Until recently, consumers had every reason to be confused. Most sparkling wine producers in California did their best to replicate Champagne by selecting identical grape varieties, winemaking techniques, and packaging, in order to create something that would resemble the most famous sparkling wine on the planet.
Dan Person is one winemaker who has decided to change this mindset with the introduction of “Modern Sparkling Wine.” He says, “it’s more of a philosophy than a set of rules or methods.” Drawing upon his own first-hand experiences making sparkling wine for Schramsberg in Napa, California, via the typical form of the traditional method, Dan Person, and his wife, Jacqueline, decided to make wines that would not necessarily taste like Champagne, but rather capture the essence of California Sparkling in a bottle. They dubbed this a sparkling revolution, “It’s a brand born out of the desire to reimagine sparkling wine in California.” Dan says. The Persons make their ‘modern sparkling’ under the label, “Carboniste”, and there can be no doubt that their creations create a category all of their own.
Carboniste Wine
Carboniste Winery is tucked away in a small garage within a multi-use winemaking facility in Napa. Here, you will likely find Dan Person of Carboniste hand disgorging, dosing, and bottling sparkling wines; either for himself or as a contract sparkling winemaker for other Napa wineries. On days where he’s not busy winemaking, you may find him tinkering away on his 3D printer creating parts for a prototype he is working on. This is a customized disgorgement machine—lighter and more sustainable than anything you can find on the market today. A graduate of UC Davis, Dan—as a winemaker—is hardworking, analytical, direct, and willing to teach those interested in learning about sparkling wine production by giving them a job to do. Most of Dan’s protocols are carried out by hand. While he acknowledges the value and effectiveness of machines to help make sparkling wine, it’s apparent that he much prefers the quiet murmur of soft background music and conversation to the loud drone of a bottling line or other machinery. This is made evident by his commitment to intermittently shutting off the power to escape anything making noise, to his eagerness to strike up conversation during production.
Making Modern Sparkling Wine
While Person follows the traditional method to produce most of his wine (and the ancestral method (‘méthode ancestrale’) for his pét-nat), a few crucial decisions are completely unique to Carboniste. In fact, some changes, like their use of the Galician/Portuguese variety Albariño, and their shortened aging periods (which would be illegal according to appellation laws in Champagne) mean that Carboniste have essentially created their own method. From a consumer standpoint, the bottles themselves also look different. Carboniste bottles come with a crown cap - a cherry red metal bottle cap like the ones often used to top glass soda bottles. Dan says, “The cork was the best piece of technology 2000 years ago”, Says Dan, “To shove a soft piece of wood into the open end of your bottle was a good way of closing it. And it still works, but is not the best way of closing it anymore”. Dan’s reasoning? “All Champagne producers use a crown cap and they don’t use a cork until they go back and disgorge. So, you have to ask yourself, what is the job of the cork vs. the crown cap? They are doing different jobs, but why is one ultimately chosen over the other? The best reason I can give is one of marketing. It’s branding. It’s become part of the experience to have that cork. And to me, that is not a good enough reason to put my wine in contact with a soggy piece of wood.”
One of the pillars of the Carboniste brand is the idea of showcasing the singular qualities of Californian fruit. Dan goes on to explain,
“You know, you get TCA bottles, and older bottles that tend to taste kind of mushroom-y. And it’s not just ‘forest floor.’ That’s what old wood tastes like. You are going to get wood flavors out of that piece of cork. Some people like to use new oak in their wines, but I don’t want my wines to taste like oak. I don’t want my wine to taste like cork. That is not what I want to demonstrate; it’s not my style.”
Another variation in the vinification process at Carboniste is the reduction of the post-tirage aging time to only two months, versus around 12 months in Champagne. This avoids aging on the lees, in order to reduce the influence of yeast flavors in his wine. He says,
“It’s similar to the cork question; Do you want your wine to taste like wood? Well, do you want your wines to taste like yeast? I don’t want our wines to taste like yeast either. In Champagne, they don’t have quite as much heat and sunshine. In California, the grapes are sun kissed. You can’t help but have riper fruit. And it’s because of that fruitiness that I really don’t think additional yeastiness is helpful. I think it takes away from the wine in California.”
Carboniste’s wines are wines of place. This is evident when tasting their signature wine, the 2019 Octopus Extra Brut Albariño from Gomes Vineyard, where the Gomes family has been farming Albariño on Andrus Island (an island in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta in Sacramento County) since the 1800s, when they immigrated from Portugal. The wine is fresh and fruity, with notes of kumquat, stone fruit, white flower and a crisp salinity, reminiscent not only of the variety but also of the region where it’s being grown.
From the lack of oak influence, avoidance of lees, and eliminating anything that might influence the flavor of his fruit, down to the unique look of the bottle, Dan Person is a minimalist at heart. From a branding standpoint, what the Persons are achieving falls in line with any successful business model. They have created something we haven’t seen before, at a price point that is accessible to most consumers across all generations. With their signature, Octopus Albariño on the shelves for $28, this is a wine for everyone. When thinking about the mission statement, “Carboniste is California”, it is clear the Persons have altered traditional method for their sparkling. California’s sunshine and ripe fruit provide something unique; something that is not just an attempt to carbon-copy Champagne. Instead, Carboniste wine is purely itself.
