Ama Brewery produces a pét-nat tea brewed using local spring water from the Izarraitz Massif in the Basque Country, and high-quality tea and herbs. Pét-nat, an ancient method of making sparkling wine, is short for pétillant naturel, where the wine is bottled while it’s still undergoing its first fermentation, capturing the carbonation from the remaining yeast and sugar that creates bubbles and the structure inside the bottle–a process generally thought to have originated in Limoux, in France’s Languedoc, as far back as the 16th century.

The brewery team of fine dining chefs, artisan wine makers, scientists, craftsmen, and tea expert Henrietta Lovell, is proud of producing sophisticated, low-alcohol drinks. At 1.5 and 2.7ABV, it’s high enough to be taxed as an alcoholic drink. The current research scientist, Curro Polo, who we interviewed in March, works with co-founder and chef Ramón Perisé Moré of Mugaritz Restaurant, San Sebastian.

I met co-founder, Chef Ramón Perisé Moré at the recent Stanford Fermented Food Conference, where he updated me on developments at Ama Brewery.

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Ramón runs the R&D department of Mugaritz and is passionate about natural yeasts and spontaneous fermentation. When a German kombucha enthusiast sent him his first SCOBY through the mail, he started exploring the possibilities. Some of his early bottles exploded after he inadvertently left them to age for several weeks, and he realized that aging was the key. Those that remained had reached the point of excellence he was looking for.

We believe the future of drink pairings in restaurants will challenge the status quo. Low and non-alcoholic alternatives have become part of traditional wine pairings and have given mixologists more to play with. Our bottle-aged kombucha is as complete a drinking experience as any fine wine, beer, or sake. Less alcohol – more experience.

Method

What began as a guerrilla group of friends brewing new-wave, aged kombucha in a garage lock-up on a San Sebastian back street, evolved into a fully-fledged R&D facility. Using high-quality tea and herbs, Ama pét-nat tea is brewed with pure Basque mountain water. Its exceptionally low minerality highlights the complex flavors developed during fermentation.

Depending on the composition of these infusions and the action of the SCOBYs, the micro-batches are ready for bottling between one and three weeks later, when simple sugars, yeasts, and bacteria have achieved the right balance. The closed environment of the bottle means the bacteria are starved of air and are unable to acidify the drink excessively. The yeasts, meanwhile, continue turning simple sugars into bubbles.

As the bubbles mature they decrease in size, becoming more integrated into the liquid. Aromas intensify, flavors harmonize, and the mouthfeel becomes silky. The micro-batch kombucha is released to market after a minimum of six months of bottle-aging at room temperature, when it has become more rounded and each infusion has developed a distinct character, resulting in an exceptional drinking experience.

The resulting Amas are lightly sparkling, richly flavored, and elegant – an expression of the terroir and craftsmanship that go into them.It is an ambient beverage that doesn’t need to be kept cool, as it is filtered to delay fermentation.

Water is key

Ama Brewery emphasizes that water is a key ingredient.

We believe in a terroir of water consisting of an environment, a geology, a climate, a culture and ways of doing things that only happen in this place and time and have been gradually moulded over the centuries. The plants we use to create our drinks express the regionality of the places they come from: sencha tea from Shizuoka, in Japan, lemongrass from Sri Lanka, green tea from Malawi, milk oolong from Taiwan… grown by people who, despite the great distances and cultural differences, share the same vision vis-à-vis sustainability, ecological agriculture and the search for taste. However, it is water, the element that makes up 95% of our pét-nat tea, that – as happens with the kuras in Japan – anchors us in our own land, linking us through it to the foothills of the massif of Izarraitz, where we work and live with that mountainous, marine and karstic landscape in which small farmers, stockbreeders and fisherfolk lay the basis for the culinary identity of the entire country.

Kombucha

Ama sells small batch varieties in 750ml champagne-style bottles priced from Euro 24 to 35 ($28 to $41), but doesn’t actually market their beverage as ‘kombucha’.

We don’t call it kombucha. So the word kombucha appears in the back label, in the third or fourth line. We try to stay away from the word kombucha because, as I said, the expectations that we can create about what’s inside the bottle. We made a label that you cannot see because we understand that we made a beverage that doesn’t exist! So that was the idea. Some people think that it was a mistake to make a bottle with no branding because you cannot see Ama anywhere in the bottle.

Indeed, some of the labels are anonymous.

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Inspired by Basque sculptors Chillida and Oteiza, the wonderful folks at @foolagency developed the motifs that adorn our stunning labels, a reflection of our roots in the Basque Country.

The information is listed on the back.

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Other varieties have more distinctive labels. Only 251 bottles of this Pét-nat Tea were made, using Kirishima Sencha Zairai — a rare tea grown from seed (not cuttings) by the Hayashi family in southern Japan. Each plant is distinct, resulting in a more complex and nuanced expression of its unique terroir. The label by Jorge Elósegui Astrain (@estudioprimo ) reflects the collaboration — two circles, their overlap marked in green as the tea leaf, with soft wave-like edges echoing traditional tea imagery.

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Another is Rosé, Elusive Cuvée Vol. 5, a groundbreaking blend of low-alcohol sophistication, that offers a complex harmony of red berry and vegetal notes with well-defined tannins and delicate bubbles. The bright green leaves of the Asatsuyu variety are gently nurtured under shade for three weeks before their late-April harvest. This process intensifies their natural sweetness, giving rise to the rare Tennen Gyokuro, which we infuse with our local Alzola spring water and tint with a touch of elderberry juice. Two hundred sixty bottles were produced, ideal for pairing with fatty dishes, as well as game.

Other varieties on the Ama Brewery website include:

• BI – Lemongrass, Amba Estate, Uva Highlands, Sri Lanka. 1.5%





• HIRU – Malawi Steamed Green & Malawi White Peony, Satemwa Tea Estate, Malawi. 2.5%





• LAU – Golden Lily Milk Oolong, Taitung, Taiwan. 2%





• BOST – Jasmine Silver Needle, Fuding, Fujian, China. 1.5%

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Podcast

I sat down with Chef Ramon at the recent Stanford Fermented Food Conference and asked him to share the story of Ama Brewery.

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