You Always Remember Your First <3

Jun 2

It’s Wednesday night. I’m sipping on a glass of Bichi 2019 Pet Mex. Listening to our friends, the Westside Winos on their weekly Twitch show. (Wednesdays around 7pm, follow them @WestsideWinos on the Insta and catch them on Spotify here.) The smooth sounds of DJ Kaleem are making me reminisce about my first. First natural wine, that is. Bichi Pet Mex will always hold a special place in my heart because it was my very first natural wine. Given to us by our good friends, Megan and Jeff, during a night out at Night + Market in Culver City. It pretty much flipped our world over on it’s axis when it came to wine.

I vividly remember my first taste. And I fell in…love? Lust? I believe love at first sight is a complete fantasy, but maybe I was lucky.

My eyes, wide open in delight. “This doesn’t taste like wine!” I was tasting…..fruit. And….flavors. This was coming from someone with little to no experience with wine in general. From someone who might have not have really tasted GOOD wine, someone who would immediately get tired or wheezy or nauseous when I tried to be a grown up and have a glass with dinner. I was slightly nervous about how this glass would make me feel. We ended up finishing two bottles of natural wine during dinner and on the ride home I felt…..WONDERFUL.

Bichi Pet Mex is a pet nat hailing from Baja California, Mexico. It is sparkly watermelon and strawberry pop rocks in a light, refreshing, liquid form. A little on the sweeter side, due to the residual sugars (but not in a manufactured way) with a lingering, fruity finish. My mind was blown that a wine could taste like this. And I didn’t feel like shit after drinking it.

This “shitty” feeling with wine is more common than I realized, after speaking to friends about it. And it’s almost non-existent when I drink natural wine. I haven’t quite figured out what it is…could it be that natural wine lacks the many additives and chemicals that winemakers aren’t obligated to tell you is in their wines? Could it be the minimal amounts of sulfur that is added to natural wine? Who knows. All I know is that it makes me feel GOOD. The wine is alive and it is so evident in the many ranges of flavors we’ve had the pleasure of tasting. Flavors ranging from stone fruit to savory herbs to coconut to leather and so much more. All from the simplicity of a grape. It’s pretty amazing!

This bottle was delicious, just as tasty as the past vintage we first had. (Might have been a 2016 or 2017? Not sure.)

We ordered this bottle from Wine & Rock Shop, located in 29 Palms. An interesting thing about Bichi and their wines is that they aren’t quite sure what types of grapes they are growing. They’ve BEEN there for years. Here is more about this delicious wine, from the maker:

Pet Mex comes from a single, dry-farmed, and own-rooted 69-year-old vineyard comprised of a mysterious grape variety that remains unidentified. The vines are planted close to the Pacific Ocean at 1,066 ft above sea level on sandy loam and granite soils in the area of San Antonio de las Minas in Ensenada, Baja. The grapes are hand-harvested, de-stemmed, and pressed after a few hours on the skins. Fermentation is with wild yeasts, and the wine is bottled before fermentation is finished, where the wine went through secondary fermentation, a la metodo ancestral. The result is a fresh and vibrant sparkling rosado, a perfect vin de soif to knock down on a hot day. No filtration or added SO2.

Founded: 2014