Princic Jakot

In recent times, wine tastes have changed. Nowadays we prefer to avoid wines that are all the same because they don’t bring anything or tell us anything. Orange wine, on the other hand, is in fashion. These wines have a strange and wonderful style and there is plenty in them for our senses to pick up. One of the champions of this new way of seeing wines can be found in the village of Oslavia, in the Friuli-Venezia-Giulia region of Italy. We are talking about the amazing Dario Princic, pioneer of great macerated white wines and a true living legend who is highly thought of by those making wines through skin-contact maceration.

With 11 hectares of vineyards lying a few metres from the Slovenian border, this great wine guru cultivates his Friulano variety vines using organic and biodynamic agriculture. These vines are planted on spectacular terraces with soils composed of clay, limestone and marl, and therefore have to be manually cultivated without the use of machinery. When the hand-picked grapes reach the winery, Dario works exclusively with traditional methods. Princic Jakot undergoes a 22-day skin-contact maceration and a spontaneous fermentation with native yeasts before being aged for 24 months in old wood barrels. The wine is not altered or filtered, instead being left to develop on its own.

The results are impressive. Princic Jakot is an orange wine with a good structure, elegance and precision. Collio’s pure strength brought out by non-intervention.