Friuli and Collio: orange wine at the border

Orange wine has a home address, and it is a hamlet on a hill above Gorizia. Oslavia, in the Collio of Friuli in north-east Italy, is where Ribolla Gialla went back into open vats with its skins in the 1990s, and where Georgian qvevri were buried in a cellar floor in 2001. This is a five-day route, Trieste to Trieste, with three full days in the Collio and Carso: two among the ponca terraces of Oslavia and Gorizia, one on the limestone plateau above Trieste with the Adriatic in view. Six to ten guests, long tastings, short drives, and a border you cross on foot. I pour the amber wines beside the pale ones from the same hills, because the choice is the lesson.

Day 1: Trieste#

Arrive by air or rail. Trieste airport at Ronchi dei Legionari is 35 minutes from the city, the station sits on the Venice line, and from Brno I drive it in about seven hours via Vienna and Graz. A driver meets each of you and takes you to a small hotel near the Canal Grande. At 18:00 we walk to Piazza Unità d’Italia, the square that opens straight onto the sea, then to dinner: jota, the sauerkraut, bean and pork soup of Trieste and the Carso, and a plate from the city’s buffet tradition, boiled pork with grated horseradish. Two Ribolla Giallas on the table, both from the Collio. One pressed straight off the skins and raised in steel, pale, lemon and almond. One after months on skins, amber, tea and dried apricot, with a tannin that stops the conversation for a second. The distance between those two glasses is the week. Night in Trieste.

Day 2: Oslavia, Radikon and Dario Prinčič#

We leave at 09:00; Gorizia is 45 minutes north, Oslavia ten more. The hill is ponca, marl and sandstone that crumbles; the ossuary above holds about 57,000 dead of the Isonzo front. Radikon first, farming here since 1861, bottling from the 1979 vintage. In 1995 Stanko Radikon returned to his grandfather’s skin fermentation for Ribolla; his son Saša has run the estate since 2016. Open oak vats, months on skins, years in botti, no filtration, and litre bottles with a slim cork, ageing like magnums. We taste Ribolla, Oslavje and Jakot, Tokaj spelled backwards. Lunch in Cormons, 20 minutes west: frico with polenta, San Daniele ham. At 15:30, Dario Prinčič, ten hectares of terraces a few hundred metres from the border, sons Andrea and Marco beside him. Whites spend eight to 35 days on skins in open oak or chestnut, then 18 to 24 months in old wood. Deep amber Ribolla, quince and camomile. Two nights in a family-run hotel in Gorizia.

Day 3: Gravner, the border square and Monte Calvario#

Gravner is not a tasting room. I request the morning as a trade visitor for each departure; if the answer is no, a neighbour’s cellar takes the morning and the Ribolla comes to our table that night. When it opens: Joško Gravner, bottling since 1973, went to Georgia in 2000 and buried eleven qvevri in 2001. The rule is four sixes: six months on skins in qvevri, six off skins, six years in botti, six months in bottle; release about seven years after harvest, Ribolla Gialla and Pignolo only. Amber, dried apricot, walnut, salt, at cellar temperature. Lunch in Gorizia, then across Piazza Transalpina on foot into Nova Gorica. At 15:30, Monte Calvario, 110 to 140 metres, where Damijan Podversic recovered land abandoned since 1940; Gravner and Nicola Manferrari are among his teachers. Sixty to ninety days on skins, three years in botti, a year in bottle: dried peach, iodine, chalky tannin. Dinner is free tonight; I book tables.

Day 4: the Carso, Vodopivec and an osmiza#

Forty-five minutes south-east, up onto the Carso, the limestone plateau above Trieste at 200 to 400 metres, thin red soil over rock, bora wind. Colludrozza is a hamlet of Sgonico, Zgonik in Slovene, at about 260 metres. Paolo and Valter Vodopivec have bottled since 1997: six hectares at 10,000 vines per hectare, one grape, Vitovska, of which about 60 hectares exist in Italy and Slovenia. Origine spends two to four weeks on skins in open Slavonian oak; Solo six months on skins in buried Georgian qvevri and two years in botti. Pale amber, pear, dried herbs, salt, fine tannin. Then an osmiza, a farm licensed since Joseph II’s decree of 1784 to sell its own wine and food a few days at a time; a leafy branch at the lane, the frasca, says it is open. Vitovska and Terrano from the jug, home-cured ham, cheese, boiled eggs. Down to Trieste, 25 minutes, for the farewell dinner and last night.

Day 5: Trieste#

Breakfast, then a coffee the way the city takes it, standing, in one of the old cafés near the sea. Transfers to the airport, 35 to 40 minutes, or to the station, are timed to each of you. If your train is late I walk anyone who wants up the hill to San Giusto, where the whole gulf lies below, and we talk about which bottle to open first at home. Amber wines travel well; they have the tannin for it, and bottles go in checked luggage or, where the estate offers it, by courier. Lunch is on your own.

Who this tour is for#

For anyone who has drunk one bottle of orange wine, liked it or not, and wants to know what months on skins in open oak do to Ribolla Gialla, and why the growers pour it in litre bottles at 15 °C with dinner. For eaters who do not mind pork: jota, frico and osmiza plates lean that way, though cheese, eggs, polenta and beans carry a vegetarian through the week if you tell me in advance.

The days are short on driving and long at the table; six to ten wines per cellar is normal, often from the cask, and I do not hurry them. Every evening a pale Ribolla or a steel Friulano from a classic Collio house sits beside the amber wines, because the point is the winemaker’s choice, not the camp.

If your curiosity runs to Nebbiolo, the Piedmont route is the classic counterpart; if it runs to volcanoes, Frank Cornelissen’s cellar is on the Etna tour. Any of it runs as a private tour for two to twelve.

Practical notes#

Flights: Trieste from several European hubs, Venice Marco Polo at 1 h 40 from Gorizia, or Ljubljana at 1 h 30; tell me where you land and the transfer is arranged. By rail, Trieste is on the Venice line and is reached from Vienna via Villach and Udine.

Weather: the Collio receives about 1,500 mm of rain a year and can deliver some in any month; May and June run at 22 to 27 °C by day, late September and October at 16 to 24 °C, with cool cellar mornings. The bora on the Carso can blow hard on any day. Pack a rain jacket, a layer and shoes with grip for the ponca terraces and cellar steps; no walk is longer than 40 minutes.

Osmize take cash. Sockets are type L and F; EU roaming covers Czech and Austrian SIMs. Ribolla comes in from late September into October, so the autumn departure may find open vats fermenting and a grower who cannot sit long, which is its own kind of lesson.

The FAQ covers single rooms and dietary needs; my note on orange wine and skin contact explains the method before you taste it, and visiting a winemaker explains why we never arrive late.