La Castellada, Ribolla Gialla 2019

Why we love this bottle

Oslavia is a tiny village near Gorizia, on the border with Slovenia, often called the home of orange wine. In 1954 Giuseppe Bensa, a carpenter, came back from Switzerland. He bought land with a house and turned it into a tavern, where he poured his own wine. In 1985 his sons Giorgio and Nicolò started selling the wine in bottles, and since 2009 Nicolò's sons Matteo and Stefano work with them. We love it because it is patience in a bottle.

Their Ribolla Gialla stays on its skins for two months in open wooden vats, the way you make a red wine. Those skins give it its amber colour. Then it ages two years in large wooden casks, almost another year in steel and a year in bottle. Nothing is filtered. Between harvest and the bottle on the shelf there were about four years of patience. Quince, ripe apricot, candied orange peel and nuts. Salty and firm. Let it breathe, and give it the time it was given itself.