Bichi "Pepe Nat" Baja California, Mexico 2023

FROM JOSÉ PASTOR:

THE WINE: 100% Dolcetto from the San Antonio de las Minas vineyard in Ensenada. The grapes were hand-harvested and fermented in whole clusters with wild yeasts. The wine is pressed after 25 days and and bottled early to finish fermentation under crown cap to make a petillant naturel wine. No added SO2.

THE PRODUCER: Some of the most authentic and delicious wines are born from the least expected places and most unlikely collaborations. In the rugged mountains of Mexico’s Baja California Norte, Bichi has put together one of the most exciting projects in the world of wine. Noel Téllez and the Téllez family founded Bichi in 2014. The family is originally from Sonora, and the name of the winery, Bichi, means ‘naked’ in the Sonoran Yaqui language. From 2014 to 2017, Noel worked closely with his family and with Louis-Antoine Luyt (the French winemaker who made his name working with old vine País in Chile) to find and make wine from the area’s ancient vineyards of diverse varieties; today Noel makes wine own his own after many years of collaboration with Yann Rohel of Beaujolais. Their focus is on organic and dry-farmed heirloom vineyards that express the long and complex viticultural history of Baja California. While the Valle de Guadalupe has overall adopted a more technological and modern approach, Bichi adheres to traditional methods and minimal intervention. Bichi farms 10 hectares of their own Tecate vineyards biodynamically and collaborates with a growing network of small farmers who work vineyards organically in Tecate and around San Antonio de las Minas in the coastal Valle de Guadalupe. Their work with Misión is notable, but other varieties include Rosa del Peru, Tempranillo, Palomino, Chenin Blanc, and harder-to-identify rarities - as in the No Sapiens vineyard, which is planted to a still-unidentified grape that resembles Italian Dolcetto. In the winery, grapes are destemmed by hand and gently trodden by foot, and fermentations are carried out by wild yeast in locally made concrete amphorae and flex tanks. The wines are raised in a mix of neutral barrels and steel vats, with only a minuscule 10 ppm of sulfur added at bottling when necessary.