The great French actor Jean Gabin (above) is one of many to have played Georges Simenon’s beloved Paris police inspector Jules Maigret on the big screen, and is, for us, the only one to have utterly embodied the character. One of Gabin’s more indelible, though oft overlooked, performances is in the classic 1959 film “Maigret and the Pet Nats,” — an important early example of the genre known as wine noir.
In it, between meals of his wife’s famously delicious cassoulets, daubes and skate in black butter, Maigret attempts to solve the mystery of exactly what is, and what is not, a true pétillant naturel — or pet nat for short.
We’ll skip the somewhat convoluted plot details and get right to the film’s intriguing denouement, in which Maigret learns, by means of his characteristically artful interrogation of a none too savory informer, that the authentic pet nat is a lowish alcohol, lightly fizzy red, white or pink wine whose modest bubbles are the result not of a second fermentation in the bottle provoked by the addition of sugar and yeast, as is practiced in Champagne, but by the simpler technique of bottling wine before its fermentation is quite complete.
Yeasts resume their activity in the bottle – usually under a crown cap — consuming whatever remains of the grape sugars. The resulting CO2 gas, trapped in the wine, provides the fizz.Never intended to mature to a mellow age in some musty cellar, pet nats are simple, thoughtless creatures who want nothing more out of their brief, hectic lives than a good slide down the hatch, quenching thirst and giving life to the party. Of ancient provenance, they were originally intended for consumption solely by the winegrower’s family and field help.
But in the world of wine, everything old is new again. And these days pet nats are the coolest things in bottle. No wine bar with pretentions to hipness can be without a peck of ’em on its list. Still, a whiff of mystery clings to them. How does one know when one is dealing with the authentic article rather than an imposter? Dear old Maigret had three tests to apply to the problem. You’d do well to follow his lead.
Test no. 1: Is the wine actually fizzy? The first half of the name is, after all, pétillant, meaning lightly sparkling (in Italy it would be frizzante). If your wine doesn’t have a proper case of spritz, it can’t be a pet nat. This much is simple and obvious.
Test no. 2: Is the bottle sealed with a crown cap? Pet nats have low levels of pressure, so there’s no need for the heavy bottles, chunky corks and wire tie-downs you see in many Champagne method sparkling wines. Crown caps are also cheap, a bonus for the winemaker if the clientèle is accepting of them. In the same way that not every hatted pipesmoker is Maigret, the presence of a crown cap isn’t by itself conclusive. Still, Maigret himself was almost never seen to be without his trademark accoutrements. So draw your own conclusion.
Test no. 3: Is there schmutz in the bottle? Pet nats are not only simple, they’re a bit crude. They don’t get much in the way tidying up. They generally march out into the world accompanied by clouds of the rubbish yeasts produce as they do their work, die and remain behind as taste-neutral sediment in the bottle. True pet nats are thus rarely without their telltale traces of lees. This, perhaps, is the naturel part of the name.
As Maigret discovers, applying the tests can itself be a little challenging, since, while each of these elements is significant, no single feature, nor even any combination of two, is sufficient to close the case. Like the celebrated inspector, you need to be both observant and something of a wise old head to get it right.