2007 Ribolla Gialla Bianco
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Tasting notes
Having evolved so slowly more than ten years after the harvest, the 2007 Ribolla offers a wide and expansive bouquet that makes a big first impression. The wine shows a copperish-golden hue that has taken on a slightly darker appearance. This wine is drinking beautifully at the moment with a pure sense of honey and dried fruit that is transmitted with elegance and grace. The mouthfeel offers impeccable integration. This is the only year without botrytis, so there's that dryness on the bouquet. Try this one with a peanut chicken satay.
Critic scores
Julia Harding MW, jancisrobinson.com
Julia Harding MW, jancisrobinson.com
More reviews and scores
Pale, lustrous copper. Gorgeous, compelling nose of spiced orange, a hint of dried apricot, sweet camomile, a suggestion of cinnamon and dried herbs and baked apple and a saline note. Keeps on changing while becoming more and more 'weighty' on the nose. The palate is sensationally balanced by acidity, and in perfect interplay with, and giving great lift to, the fruit. Finely woven tannins. Burned orange-skin notes emerge on the finish. An experience as much as a wine. (WS)
From all their vineyards. A year with no botrytis. Coppery gold. An intense mix of dried grasses and concentrated bitter apricot and orange. Spice and burnished gold. I feel rich when I smell this. Firm, compact, dry but more austere than the nose suggested, without the apricot sweetness of botrytis. Deep, chewy yet the tannins are very finely textured. Refined and polite. (JH)
Fermented with the skins but usually without the stems in Georgian qvevri buried underground with ambient yeast and no temperature control. The wine is drawn off and pressed and then put back into clean qvevri for another 5 months at least. Six years in large old oak. Unfined and unfiltered. Not as aromatic as I had expected but plenty of fruit on the palate – smoky apricots, a touch of beeswax and spice. The texture is dry and more grainy than on the Breg 2007. Lovely freshness at the heart of the smoky, rich complexity. (JH)
About the producer
Along with the likes of Radikon, Joško Gravner – whose vines straddle the Italian-Slovenian border – is a leading light of the natural-wine movement. His skin-contact Ribolla Gialla has inspired many imitators, while the rare Pignolo is prized by those in the know.