The first thirty cases of Barbichette Riesling were made in the corner of a Brooklyn coffee roaster, which tells you most of what you need to know about how this project thinks.
Backstory
Barbichette is the work of Louisiane Remy and Cesar Vega. Louisiane was raised between France, Switzerland and New York and came from a background in art and fashion design. Cesar grew up in Nicaragua and Miami before moving to New York to study photography and founding the specialty coffee company Cafe Integral in 2012. They began making wine experimentally in their Brooklyn roastery, producing those first thirty cases of Riesling, then grew the operation north to Dundee.
The Region
The wines come from New York's Finger Lakes, with fruit drawn from vineyards around Seneca Lake. The cool, deep-lake climate of the region moderates winter cold and is well suited to Riesling and other cool-climate varieties, making it one of the most distinctive cool-climate zones in the eastern United States.
Vineyards & Farming
Barbichette does not own vineyards. Instead it buys fruit from a handful of organic and sustainably farmed growers, all on Seneca Lake, chosen because their farming matches its terroir-focused philosophy. Working with several sites lets the pair draw on a range of grapes from one small region.
Winemaking
The approach is strictly less-is-more: nothing added and nothing removed. The wines are made by hand using simple, manual methods, with no added sulfites, no added yeasts, no chemical additives and no fining or filtration. Spontaneous fermentation does the work, and the wines are bottled as they are.
The Wines
From the 2021 harvest the project has produced seven cuvees spanning white and orange as well as red and rose. They draw on Finger Lakes grapes such as Riesling, Chardonnay, Seyval Blanc, Pinot Noir and Merlot, in bottlings like the Oui Non red and the Nuit Blanche orange.
