A recurring theme for us over the last few years has been the emergence— and excellence—of wines from Eastern European nations, especially Slovenia and Croatia.

Piquentum was the ancient Roman name for the hilltop town of Buzet, where Dimitri Brecevic farms about 4.5 hectares of native grapes and works in a winery housed within a Mussolini-era concrete water tank. Buzet is a good 40 kilometers from the Adriatic, its vineyards interspersed with dense forest, and the soils are a mix of limestone marls of both a white (flysch) and rusty (karst) hue. It’s the same soil composition found further north in FriuliVenezia Giulia, Italy, whose eastern edge was once a part of Istria.

Dimitri Brecevic was born in France, studied enology there, and apprenticed at wineries in Bordeaux, Burgundy, Australia, and New Zealand before he decided to launch a new project in his father’s homeland. He founded Piquentum in 2004, repurposing that aforementioned water tank and focusing on native varieties—Malvazija and the reds Teran and Refosco—in the vineyards.

The Malvasia we’re talking about here is the local biotype known as Malvazija Istarska (Malvasia Istriana in Italian). The Malvasia “family” of grapes is one of the world’s largest, but the Istrian subvariety is one of the best. It’s an aromatic variety, and some versions take on a pleasing, beeswax-y heft without dropping too much acidity. This ’21 was fermented on ambient yeasts in a combination of oak casks (70%) and stainless steel tanks (30%), following a three- to four-day maceration on skins.

It is not an “orange” wine, but rather a brilliant golden-hued white with just the right amount of phenolic twang imparted from its time on the skins. It is bright and aromatic, with notes of orange oil, white peach, white and pink flowers, dried herbs, crushed rocks. It has nice heft on the mid-palate but also bracing acidity and a hint of sea salt on the finish. Serve it with Shrimp Scampi, as they would in Adriatic-adjacent cities like Trieste, the gateway to Istria.