The first image I have of Josko Gravner is backlit. I'm waiting for him sitting in his kitchen, together with his wife Marija, who is preparing lunch, and to his daughter Mateja, who tells me: "Do not take it if you'll say a few words, it's like that." I see it coming from a small window that frames it perfectly. Hat on his head, slow pace, the dogs that are glued to him like shadows. He enters the house, refreshes himself, introduces himself. We sit immediately at the table. «Let's start every meal with a 'salad from our gardenI hope it goes well, "he begins and, in the meantime, pours the first glass of wine. This salad of freshly picked lettuce, tomatoes and cucumber, seasoned with salt, oil and vinegar, suggests a striking intuition: the Ribolla di Gravner is a unabated wine, which is fine with everything. I had confirmation in the days to follow, when I drank it with the excellent Gazpacho of Marija, with the salami and sausages made by Josko, but also with the "sea urchins, bottarga, anchovies and liquorice" and even with the watermelon seasoned with honey and chilli, both dishes of Antonia Klugmann. In short, it is a wine of the soul, which speaks to the soul. Needless to try to analyze it, refuses to be pigeonholed, so much is changing in its many nuances, almost had a different mood, depending on the time of day, the combination of food and the cup where it was poured (Josko for its wines has created a glass very particular). It is better to drink it with generous sips, avoiding, for once, the vivisection of flavors. And, in fact, at the table, we talk about everything, except wine. There are topics that excite Josko (the recently read books and my amazement for his salamis and the thousand questions I asked him about); others that bore him – the story of his career – but that I can not avoid: the stages of his professional life are one bigini of the history of Italian viticulture. Josko was born in 1952 and makes his first harvest at the age of 15. The first bottling is in 1973; the following year he eliminates the barrels used by his father and vinifies in steel, then is conquered by the barrique: we are in 1982, the year in which he begins the thinning operation in the vineyard (that is, he throws some of the bunches on the ground before the harvest) and everyone takes it for madness, because at that time quantity still commanded quality. In 1994 he made the first tests of maceration, in 1997 he experiments the first vinification in a small one amphora and in 2001 those from Georgia arrive. "The amphorae put grapes at ease, there is no need to do anything else", he comments laconically, his umpteenth revolution, the one for which he has definitively become a myth for all wine lovers. In 2018 he made his fifty-first harvest, but he has not yet tired of looking for the "new" best way. It has recently approached biodynamics; now avoids de-stemming white grapes; they have just handed him new amphorae that he will bury outside, rather than in the cellar; he will no longer produce his White Breg, to concentrate only on the ribolla. "Because this is the grape that best expresses my land".
Why now: it is a wine full of energy, like nature that awakens at the beginning of spring
As did: the grapes ferment with a long maceration in Georgian amphorae, with indigenous yeasts and without temperature control. After racking and pressing, the wine rests in amphora again for 5 months before starting the refinement of six years in large oak barrels.
To combine with: try it with everything, but, in particular, with the linguine with sea urchins.
Serve it to: 16 ° C.
Price: 60 euros
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