Just when you think you know a thing or two about wine, someone or something comes along to remind you that there’s always more to learn. My latest reminder was this wine, which my friend insisted I taste blind. Even though I knew he was trying to stump me (success in such challenges is often as much about gamesmanship as the empirical evidence in the glass), I was convinced that what I was tasting was a First Growth Bordeaux Cabernet with at least a decade of age. The cedar, the tobacco, the leather, the succulent black fruits, the perfume, the refined texture...I had landed in Pauillac, trying to settle on which château it might be, when my friend revealed it to be the 2004 “Breg” Rosso from Gravner—a wine from the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region in northeast Italy, crafted from a local (and, at one time, nearly extinct) grape called Pignolo. Well, I was close on the vintage, which was some consolation, but then again, I didn’t spend any time lamenting my incorrect call—all I cared about was getting more of that wine! We spent the better part of an afternoon ooh-ing and aah-ing over this bottle, which just got better and better the longer it was open. While I’d heard about Gravner’s red wines over the years—Josko Gravner is widely regarded as a white wine visionary and the father of the modern movement toward skin-fermented “orange” wines—I’d never been able to try one. Needless to say I was blown away. This is a world-class aged red wine and one of the very best bottles I’ve opened in recent memory.

Gravner’s Rosso “Breg” (he also bottles a white blend under the name Breg) is on the shortlist of Italy’s greatest red wines. While I readily concur with generations of wine authorities who’ve called Josko Gravner “iconic” or “legendary” (and even “The King of Italian Wine!”), it still somehow doesn’t seem like enough. Gravner’s story, the history his wines embody, and the depth and beauty that comes from this small cellar in the foothills of the Julian Alps can’t be summed up in a few flattering words. You must drink this bottle to fully understand.

Gravner is one of the most well-known and influential personalities in Italian wine. For 300 years, the Gravner family lived upon and farmed the same small hillside in Oslavia, on Italy’s border with Slovenia. The family persevered through multiple empires and World Wars, and in the 1980s and ‘90s, Josko Gravner was becoming an increasingly important figure in modern Italian wine. With state-of-the-art winemaking equipment, vineyards full of Chardonnay and Merlot, and cellars full of new oak barrels, Josko had engineered a reliable system for bottling rich, powerful, squeaky clean young-release wines that commanded high magazine scores and sold out on release. 

Still, one night after a long day of wine tasting and vineyard tours during a research expedition in Napa Valley, Josko was struck by an epiphany—namely, that overripe French varietal fruit, technologically advanced cellar equipment and an entire global wine culture addicted to a single, homogenous standard was destroying everything he loved about wine. He was making “modern” wine that sold well, but expressed little about the nature, history, and soul of his land. So, upon return, he completely changed course, uprooting most of his “international” varieties and re-planting to native grapes such as Pignolo and Ribolla Gialla. He also sold off his stainless steel fermenters and his wooden barriques in favor of large, terra cotta amphorae acquired from Georgia (as in the Caucasus, where winemaking culture is widely believed to have originated). He modeled his operation in Friuli after the ultra-traditional wineries he saw during his pilgrimage to Georgia, burying the amphorae in the earth and fermenting the wines in the most primitive way possible—with all grape clusters intact, native yeasts, no temperature control, no fining or filtration, and only the slightest hint of sulfur at bottling. It is as close to the way the Romans made wine as one can possibly get.

In building a bridge between modern and ancient wine, Josko has inspired an entire generation of winemakers to explore ancient vinification methods and today, one can see his thumbprint in almost every wine region in the world. Perhaps most importantly for those of us who consume the finished product, Josko insists on holding back the release of his wines until they are screaming into their prime drinking window. This 2004 spent more than a year fermenting on its skins in wooden vats, then underground amphorae, after which its spent 5 years aging in barrel and 5 more in bottle before release. If you can believe it, this is the youngest red ever released from Josko’s cellar.

The story of the Pignolo grape, meanwhile, is equally romantic and historic: In the late 1990s and early 2000s, producers in Friuli began rallying around this indigenous variety, which had all but disappeared—it was likely first cultivated by Benedictine monks at the famous Abbazia di Rosazzo, and it was at this historic abbey that some of the last vineyards planted to the grape were said to be found. A number of local vintners began propagating Pignolo and planting it more widely—it is a dark, tannic variety with very perfumed aromatics, prompting comparisons to Piedmontese Nebbiolo, although ultimately the character of Pignolo is quite different. It is, without a doubt, capable of producing serious, ageworthy wines—but even now, there isn’t a critical mass of Pignolo wine with which to make generalizations about its character. It is tannic, deeply colored, and a little wild, occasionally reminiscent of Northern Rhône Syrah, sometimes Malbec, sometimes Nebbiolo...and sometimes, as in my experience, the Cabernet family.

In the glass, the 2004 Gravner Rosso Breg is dark, concentrated and regal with a dark crimson core and auburn tones at the rim. As soon as the cork is pulled this wine erupts with towering black fruit—black currants, black cherry, black plum—and a kaleidoscope of crushed gravel, Cuban tobacco, leather, pencil lead and exotic dried spices. Robust but perfectly articulated tannins beg for a fatty cut of protein, and everything sits on a throne of powerful, barely contained minerality. Still, the real magic of this wine is its deft balancing act between visceral power/concentration and delicate finesse/polish. There is so much vigor and flavor packed into each ounce of this wine, but it all coalesces perfectly into a surprisingly refreshing and mouthwatering red. This hard-to-put-the-glass-down quality recalls some of my favorite memories of First Growth Bordeaux (think top-tier Pauillac). It is incredible wine.