• Gravner

Gravner

Hearing the name Gravner could come up with several things. Certainly his wines in amphora. But there is so much more. Meanwhile, the territory to which it belongs and with which it is in full symbiosis. We are talking about the wine area between Italy and Slovenia, a borderland between the Gorizia Collio and the Slovenian Collio. Today it is a wonderful place, quiet and full of nature. Gravner, whose name is Josko or Francesco since this is his real name, which however the law at the time did not allow because it was a "foreigner", owns 18 hectares in this area, 15 of which are vineyards in Ribolla and Pignolo. The Gravner Agricultural Company was born in 1901 with 2.5 hectares of land and a house. Here he lived and learned to work and to know the ground he walked on with his father and uncle, with whom it all began. However, it did not take long before he decided to have his say in the 1980s, a position that changed markedly in the mid-1990s. Francesco Gravner started practicing conventional viticulture but within a decade he decided to get rid of the technology he had bought, the steel tanks and the barriques. He arrived first in '97 to macerate in large wooden vats without any temperature control, then in 2001 to the point of no return that consecrated him to the world: vinification began in the large underground terracotta amphorae, the classic of Caucasian origin coming from Kakheti area. Since then not only poetry in the glass (and beyond) but a lot of ethical intelligence derived in part from two journeys undertaken which he believes to have been fundamental, California and the Caucasus. Retrace his steps, demonstrate the value of man by changing his own thinking: ... "since I started making wine in amphora, in 2001, I have never again allowed myself to control a sugar level, much less the values ​​of fixed acidity. It is not added or taken away. I take what nature gives me. I believe that in the cellar it is not necessary to learn who knows what, you just need to have the intuition of when to work, the less you intervene and the better you worked "... this is what makes us understand a little about which wines Gravner is more prone to. they are more like reds, long macerations, deep aromatic profiles, great persistence, persuasive and enveloping wines, its ribolla is vibrant, fresh and balsamic. All future wines will be produced exclusively with Ribolla and Pignolo grapes. 2017 saw the plant rootstock vines that will enter full production in the 2024/25 season, donating the first bottles only in 2032. Until the next project, the Ribolla Gravner grapes will continue to ferment with long maceration in underground Georgian amphorae, with indigenous yeasts and without temperature control, where they will return after racking and pressing for at least another 5 months before starting the aging in large oak barrels normally for 6 years. fiche or filtrations, the story will be bottled.