Yahoo News Gravner wine: the cult Italian vineyard making natural wine before it became a 'thing'
Joško Gravner is a legend in the world of winemaking. A man of character and contemplation, he quietly revolutionised his cellars until he found his way to the wines he believed in. Earning cult status, with bottles fawned over by sommeliers across the world, his wines are heralded for their purity, and their story.
High in the hills bordering Italy’s Friuli and Slovenia’s Brda region, Gravner’s vineyards are dotted across the valleys, sweeping down into the crevice between the two countries. Planted entirely with historic varieties native to the region: Ribolla and Pignollo, the vineyards are handled with the same careful consideration that is extended to the winemaking. This means no chemicals, and a noticeable absence of technology. Carved into the hills beneath the Gravner family home, lie the cellars, where you might expect to find the hum of refrigeration and stainless steel tanks. Instead you’ll find the steady quiet of the ‘Posto delle Anfore’ - the room where clay amphora pots of fermenting wine are buried into the ground, the cool of the earth providing natural temperature control. Tip-toeing around the cellars, completely dark except for the illumination of torchlight, there’s a silence, a stillness, an enveloping calm.
Joško Gravner’s ‘hands-off’ approach has become his signature style, one that’s inspired practicing winemakers to follow the same gentle principles, but it wasn’t always this way. As a young winemaker in the 70s, Gravner’s winery was at the forefront of ‘modern’ winemaking. The ingredients of which typically mean temperature-controlled, stainless-steel fermentation, ageing wines in oak barriques to impart punchy flavour, texture and concentration. It generally means favouring ‘international varieties’ - those world-recognised grapes planted across the globe such as Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay, in place of grapes native to the local land. Gravner earned a hugely successful reputation on the world stage for his quality, modern Italian wines.
A research trip in the late 80s took him to California in search of inspiration, but instead, he found profound disconnect. The ‘future of modern winemaking’ in his eyes, looked to be chemical-heavy manipulation, where winemaking process took priority over the true flavour of the grapes, and ubiquity was rife. What he saw, taught him exactly what he didn’t want to do.
Returning home, Joško decided, not to look to the future of winemaking, but to look to the past. And so began a journey to a more minimal approach, to the birthplace of wine, and to Caucasus, Georgia. It was here in the early naughties that he found the amphorae pots that would come to rest in his cellars. During these years of revolution he replanted the region’s native varieties, grubbing up the international varieties he had previously tended to, to focus on Ribolla. Stainless steel was swapped for Slovenien oak casks and the brooding stillness of sleeping amphorae, and in 1996 a hailstorm and lost crop lead to experimentation with the ‘skin contact’ style of winemaking, so arriving to deep amber-hued wines with depth and longevity. Joško, already farming organically, began working the vineyards in tune to the lunar cycle.
All of this was to the horror of local winemakers around him, who expressed anger at what he was doing - a great shame, to destroy one of Italy’s top names… Wines that had once followed a formula and a recognised flavour style, had now taken on a character of their own. Gravner wines today are deep, glossy, marmalade in colour, opulent wines of acacia honey, orange peel and sweet cinnamon spice, with texture and tannin.
Joško has been called an anarchist, and perhaps worse, but pioneering this new-ancient technique, he has both divided critics and inspired a change that has rippled far beyond the Friuli hills. Fast-forward a few years to the current day, and Gravner’s wines sit in the echelons of iconic lists across London and New York, Paris and Copenhagen.
But more than this, in his revolution within his own cellars, Joško has helped inspire a generation of other winemakers to follow suit. It could be argued that he has quietly changed the landscape of modern winemaking as we know it
Our top pick:
Gravner Ribolla 2008, £54, winebuyers.com. Find more Gravner wines with wine-searcher.com/find/gravner
