Vodopivec 10 Items

"Just one grape," Vodopivec explains, "because that offers more than enough to study." Wines made from just one grape, the indigenous Vitovska vines are grown on small plots surrounded by roughly stacked, stonewalls.

To hold the notion that the objective is "to disappear some day," says a lot of a winemaker who in the mid-1990s was identified, from the outside, as a part of a "movement", as an early Gravner protege'. Unescorted, Paolo Vodopivec traveled alone to Georgia when it was still a very dangerous voyage and officially closed to foreigners. A bracing and potently strong man, Vodopivec admits that it was a scary experience. "But I wanted to see that wine making culture for myself," he said. "Even if it meant a risk, there was something I needed to understand."

A patient man, Vodopivec ages his white wines from three to four years in cask. Production, in even the most bountiful vintages, will reach 11,000 bottles, at most. If Vodopivec sees distinct differences among certain rows, there will be further separations in that harvest. In some years, as many as four, specific selections are made.

If you were to taste a Vodopivec wine unaware of the context of skin macerations and/or vinification in amphora (techniques that later became a fad of the born again naturalists), you'd probably have no idea that he had used either technique. And this is just as he would have it. The wines simply are - they don't refer to a style or person. They are vibrant and individual wines, clearly from a very special place and very well looked after. They are singular, pure and utterly unique.