Slovenian Rhapsody

Unearthing white gold in Italy’s border region

Growing up in Gorizia, on Italy’s northeastern border with the former Yugoslavia (now Slovenia), Damijan Podversic dreamed of following his father’s path making wine for the family’s local eatery, Osteria Ronko Bienic.

But in his twenties, after Podversic planted his own vineyards and intentionally slashed production to get better flavor concentration in his grapes, his father disowned him.

“My father didn’t believe in quality,” recalls Podversic, 47, a bear of an ethnic Slovenian with laugh lines around gentle blue-green eyes. “He said, 'That is stupid. You will die of hunger.’”

The two men didn’t talk for eight years.

Now, Podversic’s meticulously produced skin-contact whites—labeled Damijan and classified Venezia Giulia IGT—can be found in elite restaurants across Europe, Asia and the United States.

He dedicates all his wines to his now-deceased father, with whom he eventually reconciled.

“The biggest gift I had in life,” Podversic says, “was when my father gave me a big kick in the ass.”

It is a late-winter morning on the gentle marl and sandstone slopes of Mount Calvario, where Podversic has restored and planted his 25 acres of vineyards in the Collio appellation.

Because it is Saint Joseph’s feast day, Podversic and his team of vineyard workers break out homemade salami and toast to the upcoming vintage.

Podversic pours from a bottle of his deep, mineral-laced Ribolla Gialla, and the first thing you notice is the color. It is darker than most traditional whites (which are made by fermenting juice without the grape skins), but shades lighter than many of the Friuli region’s “orange wines” (made by macerating the skins with the wine to extract color and tannins).

“My wines are golden—not orange,” Podversic explains. “If wine turns orange, it is oxidized. It’s shit.”

Podversic is a man of big passions and convictions, who works with delicate attention to small details.

After parting ways with his father, Podversic found a “spiritual father” in legendary local winemaker Josko Gravner, who taught him: “Don’t waste time—do the maximum for quality.”

Podversic began bottling his own wines in 1998 in a rented cellar 20 miles from his vineyards. He still produces there, making up to 2,500 cases of wines each vintage that are aged three years in oak casks—including spicy Malvasia, a wine called Nekaj from aromatic Tocai Friulano and a Chardonnay blend called Kaplja.

His 166 cases of a Merlot–Cabernet Sauvignon red called Prelit don’t impress him. A father of three, he says he only keeps a small plot of red varieties “to show the next generation we don’t need to make red wine.”

Whites are another matter.

In the kind of radical green harvest that angered his father, Podversic culls most of his vineyard fruit—including the bottom third of the grape bunches for all his white varieties, as Podversic says those berries don’t contain enough nuance and minerality.

For the defining element of his wines, he looks deep into his grapes.

“Seeds are the soul of a wine. When seeds are ripe and mature, that makes a great wine,” he says, explaining how seeds bring tannins and phenols to his wines during their three-month macerations in oak vats. “I work 364 days a year to have ripe seeds.” Podversic says he prefers what most winemakers consider difficult vintages—long, cool and damp growing seasons when botrytis (“noble rot”) concentrates fruit aromas and seeds have enough time to ripen.

In such years, such as 2010, he says he can produce symphonic dry wines: “Like Beethoven.” In drier, hotter years such as 2011, his wines offer more power: “Like AC/DC.”

Podversic, whose current dream is to excavate and build his own cellar on the hilltop above his vineyards, is about as soil-rooted as winemakers get. Last year, he got his first passport for a two-week trip to Australia with his importer, but he complained on his return that his workers hadn’t properly pruned.

A man who likes to focus on the basics, Podversic avoids bureaucracy and restrictive categorizations. He first bottled his wines under the rubric of the local Collio DOC. But after a tasting panel that reviews the appellation’s wines judged one of his bottlings too dark, Podversic pulled his wines from that classification. Since then he has released all his wines in the looser regional wine category of Venezia Giulia. And although he is certified organic, you won’t see it displayed on his bottles.

“Certification just stops people from thinking,” he says. “To understand what’s good you don’t have to see it. You just need to feel it and taste it.”