I had the opportunity to taste some wines from Slovenia the other day. Slovenia sits between Croatia and Italy and is a small country with a long history of wine production. It used to be part of what was called Yugoslavia and gave us wine drinkers in the UK in the 1970’s “Lutomer Riesling”. Remember that?
Nowadays it is part of the EU and totally independent. It has a rich diversity of microclimates within an essentially cooler climate zone which is why much of its production is white wine. Although winemakers are reinventing themselves by using international grapes such as Chardonnay and Pinot Noir they have quite a range of indigenous varieties such as Ribolla Gialla, Furmint, Zelen and Pinela.
I was impressed by the sheer freshness of the whites. Most of what I tasted were clean, fresh, fruity and well made wines - very enjoyable drinking indeed.
I tasted wines from Dveri Pax, Guerila and Vipava 1894. Between them they had recently gained medals in the Decanter World Wine Awards 2010 one of which was a bronze for Guerila’s Cuba 2008, a blend of 80% Merlot and 20% Barbera. I suppose the Barbera influence can be explained by Slovenia’s proximity to Italy.
I’ve put a couple of tasting notes of wines from Dveri Pax up on Adegga the Sipon Ilovici gaining a silver medal in the 2010 DWWA.
Nowadays it is part of the EU and totally independent. It has a rich diversity of microclimates within an essentially cooler climate zone which is why much of its production is white wine. Although winemakers are reinventing themselves by using international grapes such as Chardonnay and Pinot Noir they have quite a range of indigenous varieties such as Ribolla Gialla, Furmint, Zelen and Pinela.
I was impressed by the sheer freshness of the whites. Most of what I tasted were clean, fresh, fruity and well made wines - very enjoyable drinking indeed.
I tasted wines from Dveri Pax, Guerila and Vipava 1894. Between them they had recently gained medals in the Decanter World Wine Awards 2010 one of which was a bronze for Guerila’s Cuba 2008, a blend of 80% Merlot and 20% Barbera. I suppose the Barbera influence can be explained by Slovenia’s proximity to Italy.
I’ve put a couple of tasting notes of wines from Dveri Pax up on Adegga the Sipon Ilovici gaining a silver medal in the 2010 DWWA.
It’s always a pleasure to taste something new and different. A quick look at the web sites of the three wineries above show them to be on top of web promotion with sites that work, are easy to look at and navigate and generally give useful information. I wonder how many are on Twitter or blog? Slovenian wines are available from www.latevintage.co.uk
2 comments:
I was supposed to attend that tasting but sadly had other things to attend to that day. The whites sounds very interesting and I will have to keep a lookout for them in the future. Thanks for the write-up.
Hello Colin
Slovenia's vineyards border Styria's in Austria which produce excellent crisp and racy whites, due to altitude (over 600m).
I was a big fan of Styrian wines when I lived in Austria and Slovenia is spoken of as having similar potential, but I have not seen the same level of quality.
One to watch for the future, perhaps.
Tom
Post a Comment