“Describe a wine region that you love very much …”
If I’m being honest, it is not that hard to choose.
I will tell you about my small, yet precious Region: Friuli Venezia Giulia. A mosaic of people, dialects, landscapes. From the high mountains, through gentle hills, in the West, these lands immerse themselves in the sea while, on the east side, daring karstic rocks rise as barriers against the waves.
In this passionate whirlwind of diversity, viticulture plays a key role. In the plain of the Grave formed by pebbles, clays and sand, large expanses of vines, cultivated for centuries, compete with cereal crops for space. Old Venetian villas with their gardens complete these small rural kingdoms, bringing thoughts back to distant times.
Looking north-east, soft hills underline the shapes of this land, whose curves are cut through by sober, elegant vines, lined up like proud soldiers before the battle. Small, rural churches dot these hills from time to time, like little eyes of God.
Two territories distinct by nature and morphology give life to the denominations of the Colli Orientali del Friuli and the Collio, “Italy’s white wine heartland” as John Brunton defined it in his article published this summer in The Guardian. They are different from each other but equal in value.
The tradition of the Colli Orientali dates to the first centuries A.D. and the traces that Langobards left behind. Its full-bodied wines have a good structure and offer fragrances of great complexity.
The Collio, situated in the province of Gorizia, is characterized by a different morphology and the union of two winemaking traditions: the Italian and the Austro-Hungarian. Particularly suited for white wines, it offers rich and challenging productions. Wines with floral, fruity, and mineral scents stand out for their great taste.
We get to the end of this overview with the splendid denomination that the Carso is, with its rocks
and sea.
It is a land of divisions and reconciliations, of the sea and high grounds, caressed by a light breeze that in a flash turns into Bora; the intense wind that brings everywhere scents of trees, earth, life. It awakens, caresses your wounds, and carries away your thoughts and dreams.
Its dry, direct, vertical wines, scented like the sea and rocks, mark the taste and memories. So different from its people, so cheerful, positive… and perhaps, for this reason, unforgettable.
This is my land. A complex, precious, intriguing, elegant piece of land. A mosaic of emotions.
