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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Those were the years that followed 1918. These were the years of reconstruction, those in which the civilians were returning to the town of Oslavia and they were faced with the desolation of a country that had been canceled by the First World War. Those were the years that saw men and women start over and celebrate the end of the war with an impressive dedication to life.

Those were the years when he was digging in the rubble. There, under the rubble and the memories of a country that was, there were timid and strong branches of Ribolla; suffering but still alive, after having witnessed the worst scenarios of humanity. They were used to make the grafts and to make sure that life – of the plant and of the human being – would take off.

A difficult, hard, austere, decisive vine that seems to have absorbed every syllable of history and made it its own in the expression of its identity. Ribolla is not simply a plant or a variety of grapes: its soft and symbiotic familiarity with people and with the territory makes it an integral part of Oslavia itself. It looks like a white berry variety, but who knows and works for generations knows that its nature is that of a red. Its character is, its imprint and its stamp; it is its tannic contribution, the structure is and so is the composition of the grape seed.

All of her – "her", because, as local producers take a lot of stress, Ribolla "is female" – has the fabric of red. It is a rich vine, which needs poor soil. It gives the best of itself on the top of the hills and with the best exposure, despite being a variety that can rightly be called "introvert". And then, the peel.

That precious casket where she, Ribolla, hides the mysterious charm of her identity. He needs to express himself, like all those who have complex and long stories to tell. And she needs to be let her talk through that practice of maceration that years ago represented the daily life of local winemaking not only for red wines. After pressing the grapes, in fact, also for the white berry the marc were left in contact with the fermenting must, so that all the charge of their polyphenolic contents was transferred to it. For years this practice was shelved, in the name of conventional winemaking that respected the disciplinary criteria and responded to the demands of a market in search of white or red wines.

Some time later, Stanko Radikon and Josko Gravner decided to give expression to their Ribolla: the Ribolla macerata, the Ribolla of Oslavia. Soon they all realized that this wine he escaped from the canons, categories and expectations of all kinds. It is not a white, but it is not even a red one. His imprint sapid mineral has the fineness of a white, yet his structure and thickness gustativo make it combinable with meat dishes and cheeses.

The Ribolla of Oslavia is a Orange Wine, daughter of Oslavia's mineral stratification of the ground – the ponca – and animated by a character all its own. There are no recipes or manuals for its vinification. There is the vintage imprint, which determines harvest time and duration of macerations, and there is the intersection of this vine with human sensitivity.

Today Ribolla di Oslavia is at a decisive turning point for the recognition of its identity in the eyes of the world. The six producers that make up the Ribolla Association of Oslavia – Dario Princic, Fiegl, Il Carpino, La Castellada, Primosic, Radikon – have signed the proposal for Production regulations of Ribolla di Oslavia, to present it officially to the Consorzio di Tutela Vini del Collio. The press is waiting for a response, as well as producers.

Meanwhile, Ribolla is there, perhaps waiting too, with the composure and strength of all time.

Sofia Landoni
November 2018

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