Over the course of a week, our team has the opportunity to taste nearly 100 wines or more, and every week, bringing us into the state of curious children, wondering at the beauty of the earth and the people who tend it. A few weeks ago, tasting with Neil Gernon of Wild Bush Farm + Vineyard located on the North Shore, I got this feeling of childlike curiosity while tasting through his new vintages. A fixture of the New Orleans wine community, Neil and his wife Monica Bourgeois co-founded their Louisiana winemaking outfit several years ago and have been at the Sisyphean task of growing grapes and fruits and making wine from them—in Louisiana. Until their vines are of an age to produce, the wines are still made with California grapes, but the spirit of experimentation more than conveys the curiosity the two infuse into their wines—a nature that seems to telegraph the question “what would happen if we tried X?” The first wine below is the basis from which we worked in building this club, delighted by the fresh blending of red and white grapes, and we wondered “what if we did a co-ferment club?” So, here we are.

A co-ferment can mean many things, but at its heart it means things fermented together, i.e. in the case of wine, fruits crushed and thrown into a vessel of some sort, left to gather yeasts and convert their sugars into alcohol. The other options for a whole bunch of grapes in a bottle is a blend, or fruits that have been fermented separately and then eventually blended together and bottled, like Bordeaux or Passetoutgrains. Co-fermentations can be different fruits entirely—apples and grapes or blueberries and grapes, say—or all white or all red grapes fermented in the same vat. Often, in our conversations with guests, co-ferment has come to be a shorthand for red and white grapes fermented together to render a lighter red wine that is often chillable and super drinkable. Like all fashionable things in wine, co-ferments are nothing new—it’s a timeworn way of putting all the things together out of good sense, good taste, and working together.

In this edition of the wine club, we’ve given a range of meanings to co-ferment, and we urge you to consider the world around you a co-ferment, invariably more resilient, more creative, more interesting and, quite possibly, more curious, because you have put yourself in a place to be near and work with one another. —Leslie Pariseau

Wild Bush "Never Ending Math Equation" Coferment, Bush, Louisiana 2025

I wonder if Neil Gernon and Monica Bourgeois would consider themselves a co-ferment? The Louisiana couple have spent countless hours together building a partnership over a shared love of natural wine. Gernon and Bourgeois have been known around New Orleans as diehard natural winesellers working for local distributors (Gernon is famous among wine buyers for his psychedelic tasting sheet illustrations), while simultaneously co-founding their California-based label Vending Machine in 2009. In 2021, the two bought Pontchartrain Vineyards on Louisiana’s North Shore where they’ve invested in growing hybrid grapes as well as local fruits like muscadine, mayhews, blueberries, and pears, all while rehabilitating the land to its deep South state of wonder. 

Gernon and Bourgeois are deeply invested in the fortuitous nature of experimentation and Wild Bush’s wines run an impressive gamut of grape varieties and styles. From skin contact to piquette to a local take on port, each cuvée is a mindbending exercise in “see what happens.” 

This particular co-ferment brings together light, fresh picpoul and rich petite syrah is inspired by Côte-Rôtie’s “dark meets bright” philosophy, a balance in strength and finesse. As the petite syrah delves you into the depths of soft earth, blackberry bushes, and plush violets, the picpoul sends you back into the sunshine with a shot of acid and bright wildflowers. It's an infinite push and pull like the Modest Mouse song for which the wine is named. Serve it with a chill, a picnic blanket, perhaps some live music surrounded by horse farms and blueberry bushes—you can visit Wild Bush  for this very experience, in fact—where Neal and Monica continue to reach for the stars. —Beth Altenbernd

Mortellito "Tuttu" Rosso, Sicily, Italy 2023

Things have been “co-fermenting” in Sicily since the emergence of the Greek city states sometime around 750 BCE. Art, ideas, crafting skills, and, yes, wine flowed in and out of the tiny island due to its strategic positioning as a sort of crossroads in the Mediterranean Sea. Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, and eventually Normans weighed anchor here and sailed away with silks, chess and advanced agricultural techniques.

In the spirit of playing-well-with-others to the benefit of all, this month we offer Mortellito’s “Tuttu” as an example of what beauty can come from collaboration in a bottle.  A blend of red and white grapes—nero d’avola, frappato, insolia, grillo and perricone—from a tiny farm in the coastal desert of Val di Noto, it’s made by Dario Serrentino who has been working the family farm since he was a child.  Now as the head of the domaine in a truly unique microclimate, he consistently coaxes elegance and power from Sicily’s indigenous grapes. He credits much of the finesse, tension, and salinity to the predominantly limestone subsoil which dominates his vineyards.

While many co-ferments often lean bright and airy, nero d’avola, a thick-skinned red grape harvested from old bush vines, in this case lends true power and structure while insolia, a white grape, dominates the finish in a distinctive salted jasmine snap.  Serious juice from a shop staple.  Enjoy with a slight chill and something savory roasted over an open fire. —Drew Clowney

Baia's Wine "Tsitska-Tsolikouri-Krakhuna" Imereti, Georgia 2021

The venture of three siblings, Baia’s wine, it could be argued is its own co-ferment. With Baia Abuladze at the lead alongside her sister Gvantsa and brother Gorgi, the team is the third generation of winemakers from their family in Obcha. Growing up with their hands in the dirt, they each studied different aspects of viticulture, eventually bringing their respective skills home to combine with the traditions of their parents and grandparents. Starting in 2015, the three took over their family vineyards which were planted with traditional Georgian varietals. 

In this bottle from the Imereti region, we find the white grapes tsitska, tsolikouri, krakhuna, varieties I was not familiar with—not a surprise considering there are over 200 indigenous grape types in Georgia, the ancient cradle of winegrowing and winemaking culture. Fermented together with indigenous yeasts and 30% of their own skins for 15 days, each grape adds angles of bright acidity and aromatics, the skins lending body, depth, and hay-gold coloring. After the co-ferment, the wine is aged in qvevri, a huge clay pot that is buried in the ground where it maintains temperature and develops flavors of tart nectarine and crunchy pear, and warm stone minerality. —Cassandra Vachon

I CA RO "Schicchera" Rosato Carbonico, Lazio, Italy 2024

Though just outside an artery of ancient winemaking where field blends and cofermentation were fashionable thousands of years ago, Lazio is often overlooked in the conversation of serious Italian winemaking. Rocco, Fabio, Luca, and Gianmarco of I CA RO (an acronym for the subregion I Castelli Romani) were raised in central Rome and are some of the leaders of a younger generation bringing attention to old school winemaking traditions on the volcanic soils of Velletri south of their hometown. I CA RO’s technicolor labels and graphic font speak to not only the group’s youth, but the energy they’ve infused into this ancient terroir. 

This co-ferment is made of the local red variety nero buono plus the classic white combo of trebbiano and malvasia, which have a long history of being blended and fermented together.  Trebbiano adds body while malvasia brings the acidity and aromatics with nero buono chiming in on the big juicy notes. Salty, plummy with nervy minerality, it’s a rosé meant for late night parties and spring equinox revelry. —Allison Whittinghill

Domaine Matassa "Rollaball" Roussillon, France 2024

Winemaker Tom Lubbe’s accent is hard to place. Born in South Africa and raised in New Zealand, Lubbe traveled to Calce in Roussillon near the Spanish border in the late ’90s to stage with the legendary Gérard Gauby. What began as a seasonal internship soon became much more. Tom fell in love with (and eventually married) Gauby’s daughter, Nathalie; together they acquired a vineyard called Matassa, planted to 100-year-old carignan, and the project of the now legendary-in-its-own-right Domaine Matassa was born.

Today, Lubbe works with a number of Catalan varieties, including grenache, grenache gris, macabeo, muscat d’alexandrie, and muscat blanc à petits grains; he declassifies all of his wines as Vin de France, providing the freedom to experiment with techniques like extended skin contact for white wines and whole-cluster maceration for reds. Lubbe harvests earlier than most in the region, resulting in fresh, low-alcohol wines, generally under 12% ABV. From the beginning, he has prioritized improving the health of his vineyard soils, using pruned vine wood as mulch and planting cover crops in winter. Wild herbs and flowers grow freely among the vines. The earthworm population has increased tenfold since he began farming them.

Rollaball is somewhere between red and rosé, a coferment of directly pressed mourvèdre and carignan from 40-year-old vines. Lubbe’s relentless focus on soil health and fruit quality allows for a light touch in the cellar, resulting in wines that are sometimes slightly effervescent, and always on the more natural end of the wine spectrum. This cuvée contains a teensy sparkling zip, and is fresh and herbaceous with notes of rosehip and rhubarb and a savory finish that can stand up to a hearty meal under the Roussillon sun. Like all of Lubbe’s wines, it feels less engineered in the cellar than it does gently coaxed from the vineyard. —Haley Adams