In the stretching landscape of Italian wine, I can only name a few that evoke as much fervor and fascination as those from
Josko Gravner, a man, who after 50 vintages, has harnessed nature’s energy and infused it into his rarefied, long-aged bottlings. Over the years, we’ve offered his red a grand total of three times, and all of the endlessly glowing feedback has been accompanied by one common request: Where is his spellbinding, class-defining, flagship white? The one that put this cult classic producer on the map? The one that has graced every cutting-edge wine list around the globe? I assure you, those appeals haven’t fallen on deaf ears—we’ve been actively working to scrape enough together for an official offer, and the day has finally come.
Today’s Ribolla is the sole reason critics began bowing deeply to Gravner. It’s a white wine of truly epic proportions, one that ages for a year in buried amphorae and then six more in large barrels. This fanatic level of patience in the cellar is part of the reason he’s earned a global cult following, but what’s inside the bottle is what really counts: Every sip brings fathomless depth and luxurious layers of exotic, hard-to-pin-down flavors that evolve with each passing hour. There’s a reason wine authorities have called Josko Gravner “iconic,” “legendary,” and even “The King of Italian Wine,” and I’m here to confirm that this is no hyperbolic stretch. This man is the real deal, he’s a five-decade veteran, and his wines, especially today’s groundbreaking Ribolla, will be remembered for generations to come. That’s why I urge you to try this transcendent wine before Josko hangs up his farm boots for good.
While many would technically call today’s Ribolla an “orange” wine (a white wine that sees extended skin contact), those who follow Gravner’s wines closely know that he refuses to acknowledge the term. In an interview with the Italian Wine Chronicle, he proclaimed that “my wines are not orange; if a wine is orange, it’s oxidized.” His are wines of purity, profound depth, and, above all, superb levels of freshness.
Long story short, Josko Gravner’s whites are the defining feature of this legendary estate. But before we talk about their flagship Ribolla, I think it’s worth delving into its extraordinary backstory. It all starts three centuries ago when the Gravner family settled and began farming the same small hillside in Oslavia, on Italy’s border with Slovenia. The Gravner 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 all the state-of-the-art winemaking equipment, vineyards full of Chardonnay and Merlot, and cellars full of new oak barrels, Josko had engineered an impressive and consistent system for bottling rich, powerful, young-release wines that commanded high magazine scores and sold-out demand. 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—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 replanting to his hometown’s native grapes, Pignolo and Ribolla Gialla. Josko also sold off his stainless steel fermenters and his wooden barriques in favor of large, terra cotta amphorae acquired from a friend in 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 a pilgrimage to Georgia, burying the amphorae in the earth and fermenting the wines in the most primitive way possible—with all grape clusters intact; only native airborne yeasts for fermentation; no temperature control; no fining or filtration; and only the slightest hint of sulfur at bottling. In short, Gravner makes wine in much the same way as it was made thousands of years ago.
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’ve entered their prime drinking window. Today’s definitively unique white spent a year in underground amphorae sourced from Georgia, after which it spent six years aging in large oak barrels. Upon bottling without fining or filtering, it aged for a further year in his cellar. If you can believe it, this 2009 is among his current releases for Ribolla (the 2010 is beginning to hit our shores in the smallest of waves).
There’s a reason Gravner’s Ribolla is consistently one of the highest-praised skin-contact white wines on the market—it delivers an exceptionally unique wine experience. In the glass, the seriousness of this 2009 is immediately revealed: The wine pours a deep amber with flashes of dark yellow and copper hues and instantly uncoils myriad aromatics that no other wine can replicate. You’ll pick up red and yellow apple skins, raw honeycomb, dried lemon peel, orange blossoms, acacia, beeswax, stewed apricot, crushed almonds, juicy pineapple, muddled herbs, damp straw, golden raisins, saffron, and exotic spices. That, of course, is just what we discovered—it seems there are unlimited aromas to find in this beguiling wine. The palate is full-bodied, intensely layered, and fortified by moderate tannins and bracing acidity. The bountiful richness is always moderated by a constant, underlying freshness which is what makes Gravner’s wines so appealing. I recommend serving in Burgundy stems, around 55 degrees, and sipping slowly in order to best track its evolution. Try it 30 minutes after opening, then around the 1-2 hour mark. Come back to it at the end of the night. Cork it tight, and try it the following day, and then the next. With seven years in amphora and barrel, it has become battle-hardened and will fight against oxygen until the very end. That’s why I recommend purchasing at least 2-3 bottles because there is so much life ahead of this and every time you open one, it can be tracked for days. Cheers!
