Slovenian Wine from Štajerska

Hello, hello, hello! Welcome back to Exotic Wine Travel. I am your host, Matthew Horky. Today we are going to talk about Slovenian wine, especially wine from the eastern part of Slovenia. You know, we spend a great deal of our time in central and eastern Europe and taste lots of Slovenian wines. We go there every single year to taste, visit with producers, kind of keep up with the vintages. You have to understand that most people don't know where Slovenia actually is. And when people ask me where is Slovenia, I ask them, do you know where Italy is? Oh yeah, okay. Well, it's on the northeastern border of Italy. You got to understand as a country, Slovenia has about 21,000 hectares of vineyards. That means about 50,000 acres for those of you in the U.S. And regionally, the more famous producers are in western Slovenia, right on the border. They're wines that excite us quite a bit, especially those from Gariska Borda, Vipava Valley, Kras, which is also known as Carso in Italy. It's kind of an extension of the Carso region. And the northwestern corner of Slovenia, I'm sorry, of Istria. There's a little tip, Slovenian Istria. For Slovenian wines regionally, they're making themselves more known for orange wines or amber wines, minimal intervention or natural type of wines. You're going to see lots of wines with skin contact. They make some of the best wines on that style in the world, in my opinion. So that's what western Slovenia is mostly known for. But there's also exciting wines being made on the eastern part of the country, on the border with Austria, Hungary, and Croatia. So what you have to know on the eastern part of Slovenia, you're going to see mostly fresh white wines. We found a number of good producers of Riesling, Pinot Noir, Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, and Forment, or what they call it, Chipun there. So I've got this producer here today that actually does those fresh styles, but also does macerated styles that you're going to kind of see in western Slovenia, named Matic. First of all, I'm not tasting this on here, the Lepore Single Barrel. Chardonnay 2017, spent two days on the skins. It was really, really nice, aged in the barrel. I really felt like it tastes like some of the Varada wines from Movija. Movija is one of the more famous producers in Gariska Borda, and the western part of Slovenia. But I'm going to taste this today. Another thing that you're going to find in Slovenia is wines in clay vessels, Amphora. This is the Matic Get the Party Started Amphora Riesling 2018. Okay, 214 days on the skins. Let's look at this color. This definitely looks like it's not fine, not filtered. It's super cloudy. There's even some particles in it. So people in the hipster bars in New York, people that like these kind of wines, are really going to enjoy this. Is there wine? Yeah, there is. Is there wine? Who is that? Amphora wine? Yes. Oh, I'm coming. Okay. Where's the glass? Oh, okay. We're going to taste this together. This is 214 days on the skin. Get in the frame. We're out of the frame here. Okay, let's smell this. Do you like it or not? Interesting. Reminds me of, there's Austrian orange wine, still very clean. There are some sulfites added, so it's not mousy. It's not funky. What kind of room was you picking up on this? To be honest, I think it is a little bit mousy for me. I don't pick up anything actually. You're going to get a little bit of, for me, I get some dried banana, dried mango, some fall leaves type notes. Anything else that you pick up? A little bit of cotton candy, cheesy note on the nose. I don't quite mind what I mentioned earlier though, because on the palate it's actually really nice, vibrant, good acidity. Actually, very good. Riesling sometimes, we believe, struggles as a macerated white wine. Got the high acidity, got the high acidity. It's not really necessarily fruity. It's still more of an earthy driven orange wine for me. What do you think? To me, it's quite citrusy. Okay. Yeah, a little bit gingery as well. So this is the style that you're going to see in Slovenia. You're going to get lots of these types of wines. I think they can be some of the better examples in the world. So check it out. Good job Montage on this, especially the Lepore Single Barrel. I mean, I had this baby, I scored this baby 90 points. I thought it was very good, especially for the money. I'll have to taste through this a little more, see where I evaluated at. So check out Slovenian wines. They can be fantastic. For those of you that know Slovenian wine, it's not all about Western Slovenia. There are some interesting producers in Stajerska, where this guy's from, which is basically Styrian extension of Austria-Styria. Check them out. I'll put some links to other Slovenian videos, articles we did in the description box. 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