Oyster River Winegrowers ‘Morphos’ Pétillant White 2023

Location: United States, Maine

Winemaker: Brian Smith

Grapes: Cayuga, Seyval Blanc

Winemaking: the juice is bottled during the end of active fermentation

From Oyster River Winegrowers: ‘Morphos’ 2022—the new vintage is here! this wine continues to ferment in the bottle leaving it dry, cloudy, yeasty, and full of life, with a natural effervescence. Released just after bottling, it is the fresh wine of the harvest. It is fresh and fruity after bottling, but ages gracefully into more yeasty, toasty aromas. Made from a blend of Cayuga and Seval grapes from the Finger Lakes.

We are a small farm winery in Warren, Maine. Since 2007 we have been making lively wines and ciders in a low-intervention style from both our own fruit, and fruit that we source from other growers in the Northeast. Our own vineyards and orchards are managed organically. In the summer months our barn opens as a popular gathering spot for adventurous wine drinkers from near and far.

Brian Smith is the winemaker at Oyster River Winegrowers.  He has a traditional education in winemaking from Fresno State University, and uses that knowledge base to make distinct wines in ways that may have been common in pre-industrial times.  He believes his role in the winemaking process to be more nature's assistant than winemaker.  Our winery is very low tech.  We use no refrigeration in our winemaking process and our winery is just very gently heated through the winter with wood harvested from our farm.  Most of our fermentations start spontaneously with native yeasts that occur on the fruit and in the cellar, and play out over the course of several months.  We add nothing and take nothing away from the natural chemistry of the fruit.  No acidulation, deacidification, chaptalization, amelioration, tannins, enzymes, or yeast nutrients are used.  All of our ciders and our sparkling wines are bottled without the addition of sulfites and are not filtered.  Our still wines are minimally sulfited and filtered gently where necessary.  Our farm supplies the fruit for Chaos, our homegrown traditional method sparkling wine, and a good portion of our cider.  In addition to these products, Brian enjoys making wines with grapes from other regions that inspire him.