ABOUT THE PRODUCER: Bluet
Michael Terrien and Eric Martin grew up together in Maine. They headed west after college and teamed up making wine in Napa for back-to-back harvests. Eric became a novelist and moved to North Carolina, while Michael continued making wine in California. He worked at Acacia and Hanzell under the tutelage of some great mentors, founded in 2002 Poseidon Vineyard and Obsidian Ridge together with Arpad Molnar and Peter Molnar, and started his eponymous boutique line in 2007, with a chardonnay released in the spring and a pinot noir released in the fall.
“Some say we’ve got a cousin in kombucha and we agree. It’s also a bit wild like a lambic or heritage cider. The fact is Bluet’s unique, wicked tart, and 100% pure.”
Every summer, he and Eric would meet in Maine. Created in 2014, Bluet was born of these four decades of friendship, a lifelong habit of making things together, and their love of good food, good drink and the State of Maine. It started in an 1820s barn in Jefferson, Maine – a natural setting for a truly Maine wine. The fieldstone cellar turned out to be no match for winter’s cold, so in 2017 the operation was moved to a respectable if less romantic concrete and steel building. Happily, this new space allowed for the creation in 2018 of a Charmat Method wild blueberry sparkler, made in the style of Prosecco. Both the original Méthode Traditionnelle and the new sparkling are pure expressions of their single ingredient: Maine wild blueberries, each with a character of its own.
Small family farms have been struggling with shifting global agricultural economics that favor industrially produced hybrid berries. The native Maine wild blueberry grows on the acidic, gravelly soils that were deposited by glaciers after the last ice age. Appearing from mid-coast to Down East in dense short thickets, wild blueberries are tiny, dark, and more flavorful than the big berries you find at your grocery store. Not surprisingly, wild blueberries possess twice the anti-oxidant effects of hybrid blueberries. With two pounds pressed to make every bottle, Bluet is naturally healthy!
