Klinec
지역: Slovenia, Brda
1년 총 생산량: 약 24.000
I arrived in Medana, a small town just across the Italian-Slovenian border. I parked my car in front of Aleks home. I knock the door and suddenly appears Aleks. A warm strong hug, and some greeting words with his fluent Italian, spoken with a Slovenian accent. He told me to follow him and to leave the keys in the car since nobody steals anything in Medana.
First stop is at his bistro. He slices some prosciutto and proudly serves me telling me this is made from the pigs he used to raise, and this prosciutto is aged 5 years.
While I try this delicious and sweet prosciutto, as good as or even better than D’Osvaldo prosciutto, we start the wine tasting and he while we drink Klinec wines he tells me about his wines, his story and the area climate and characteristics.
The winery is part of the Collio Goriziano known as Brda in Slovenian. The location is nestled between the Alps in the north and the Adriatic Mediterranean Sea in the south. This position influences the climate of the region: lots of sun, wind, wide temperature excursion between day and night which provides deep aromas to the grapes, and finally the famous Ponka soil. A layered sea bead alkaline soil rich in mineral that is responsible for the saline taste of the wines.
Klinec winery was founded over 100 years ago at the end of the 1st World War and the area Medana was classified among the best Grand Cru since 1787, a long time before the Bordeaux Cru classification was established 1855. In his cellar Aleks keeps this document and feels proud to belong to a territory which has been making great wine for centuries.
Aleks took over the winery in 1993. He had a dream to become an artist, but his father fell from a Cherry tree and broke his back, so he had to take over the family business as the eldest son and provide for his family.
When he took over, he started a more radical approach compared to his father. No chemical in the field nor in the cellar, long maceration both for white and red grapes and long aging before releasing the wines. As an artist he did not want to make an ordinary commercial wine to find a clientele in the market but wines with a soul, with a character to inspire people.
The result are genuine traditional territorial wines produced as they used to be in the past. His wines are difficult wines to understand, wines not for everyone, rough and smooth, saline, mineral and with ripened dried fruits taste with a bit of volatile overall balanced that triplicate the powerful taste of his wines. His teachers and mentors were Josko Gravner, Franco Terpin, and Giuseppe Rinaldi from whom he learns to keep walking in his own way of producing keeping his style despite the critics from others if he thought this was the only right way.
During the visit in his beautiful old cellar, lunch with his parents we tried many wines and many vintages. The wine I like the most was Verduc 2003.
A long aged Verduzzo in big barrels with long skin contact. It is not just a deep and aged Orange but a wine that has a monstruous complexity and elegance. Once you sip and smell this wine you feel layer after layer a new scent, a new flavor. This is the wine that while you drink you won’t shut up once it is poured into your glass. Try to think about dried fruit such as dried persimmon, tangerine and apricot accompanied by tasty buttery flavor of coconut wood, peanuts and honey.
After complimenting Aleks for this wine he told me that he tried this wine with Beppe Rinaldi, one of the most legendary Barolo producers who passed away a few years ago. They were friends and he told me that Rinaldi after drinking this wine he shook his hand telling him he could not believe another wine even with white grape could achieve this level of wine.
