OUR JOURNEY
Living Wines true to their Origin
Observational Winemaking
Manual work in the Vineyard
Wild Cover Crop
Biodiversity
Spontaneous Fermentation
Minimal Intervention in the Cellar
Passion, Respect and Love
The vines average 50/60 years in age, with the exception of the Blaufrӓnkisch which was planted in 2012.
Yields are low at 1kg to 1.5kg per vine depending on the variety.
Manual vineyard work is the norm, with many long hours work with the vines – thinning out and de-leafing – to improve air circulation and create a healthy environment.
Biodiversity is central to the approach, with wild cover crops allowed to flourish between the vines, and many flora and fauna present in the vineyards.
Most years the vineyards are left without any cutting of the cover crop.
We are a 2 hectare estate based in the Jeruzalem/Ormoz region of eastern Slovenia – part of the wider Štajerska Slovenia region.
Situated up in the hills in the village of Kog at 328 metres, we produce three single vineyard bottlings:
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Furmint (Šipon),
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Laški (Welschriesling)
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Blaufrӓnkisch (Modra Frankinja)
We also produce an ad-hoc selection of wines from non-estate grapes that we purchase - we pick the fruit and raise the wines in our own cellar.
Overall production is small at around 4,000 bottles annually.
No herbicides or pesticides are used in the vineyards.
Work on the cellar is on a natural basis.
The whites are whole-bunch pressed and fermented spontaneously on their gross lees in open-top 500l old oak fermenters. It’s not unusual for fermentation to take 5-7 days to start.
The Blaufrӓnkisch is lightly de-stemmed and also ferments spontaneously in open fermenters.
Fermentations are slow, usually around 40/50 days for the whites. The Blaufrӓnkisch has gentle push-downs to avoid too much extraction and is then pressed after about 25 days.
All the wines then spend up to a year in large oak barrels without any sulphur additions. They are racked to steel tanks and left for 3 months prior to bottling when minimal sulphur is added.
