BARBICHETTE
Seneca Lake
New YOrk
3 wines $27
Barbichette
Seneca Lake AVA
For this month’s flight we’re featuring Barbichette, a young and exciting natural wine project out of New York. Headed by César Vega and Louisiane (Lou) Remy, Barbichette started as a side project in the corner of their Nolita coffee roastery, Café Integral, in 2019. I snagged some of the coffee while in New York this spring and am happy to report that the coffee and wines are equally delicious.
The grapes all come from the Finger Lakes and winemaking happens in Brooklyn. Grape-growing and winemaking has been at home in the Finger Lakes for at least the last 200 years or so. Even if a large portion of that was initially communion wine, the Finger Lakes are also the site of the first officially government authorized winery in the entirety of the United States.
Operations slowed during Prohibition and revamped during the 1950’s, eventually leading to the introduction of the first French-American hybrid varietals, including Cornell University-developed cayuga white, which is included in Oui Non–Barbichette’s co-fermented rosé.
The Finger Lakes earned their AVA in 1982 and Seneca Lake, whence the Barbichette grapes hail, in 2003. All of the vineyards enjoy an eastern exposure and rest in glacial silt loam two million years in the making. The Seneca Lake AVA is lower in elevation than its neighboring Cayuga Lake, 450 and 800 ft above sea level respectively.
Barbichette is natural wine at its best. All of the wines feature spontaneous fermentation with native yeast and are bottled without fining, filtering or added sulfites. These wines are fun but not funky–pretty, bouncy, and fresh.
César visited Websters in June and evinced a respect for the practice of winemaking I won’t soon forget. You can’t take an idea from on high and force its shape onto a harvest without taking into consideration all that the season has brought and the grapes have undergone. Sometimes you have to pivot. Most importantly, you have to respond to the harvest as it comes, and the wines will be all the better for it. These wines prove the practice right.
By Leigh Fleshman
The Line Up
Nuit Blanche 2023 (Seneca Lake AVA)
70% riesling and 30% chardonnay, the ‘white night’ enjoys a gentle overnight maceration and is fermented in a combination of foudre, barrel, and composite egg. Coming in at 11.8%, it’s aged on the fine lees, fattening the wine a bit. Nuit Blanche is hazy with a linear lemony acid backbone that’s balanced by a strong shouldered grip on which dance donut peach, petrol, and orange blossom. Nuit Blanche is the base of the water ski pyramid. When she’s doing yoga at home alone, she’s a hands-free candle.
Oui Non 2025 (Seneca Lake AVA)
A vibrant coferment rosé, Oui Non feels like going to the drive-in movie theater and adding a few extra unsupervised pumps of cherry syrup to fountain cola before spinning on the merry go-round with kids you’ll never see again an hour before the first movie starts because your parents needed to arrive early enough “to get a good spot.” You, however, have never had to manage a calendar. If you’re late, that’s someone else’s problem. And Barbichette put all that in the 800 cases of their 2025 Oui Non for you. Featuring a field blend medley of merlot, chardonnay, pinot noir, grüner, cayuga, muscat, and seyval blanc, Oui Non is both round and sturdy red fruit, like the cousin of Violet Beauregarde, Frambroise. 10%
Tête Bêche 2023 (Seneca Lake AVA)
Tête Bêche is 100% cabernet franc, a varietal that excels in the Finger Lakes due to its winter-hardiness. César and Lou produce only 250 cases of Tête Bêche, tête-bêche being the way one sleeps in tight quarters, like the head-to-tail sardines on the label. The wine, however, is anything but tight. Whole clusters are crushed and macerated for two weeks before aging 12 months in neutral oak foudre. 12.2%, the wine remains surprisingly light and refreshing. It’s like sitting in the sand with a pomegranate-mint salad and seeing the burst of 4th of July fireworks from Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan all at once.
By Leigh Fleshman
