How I met the man who is Oz and filled in for the Wizard of Slovenian winemaking at Vinexpo 2009

The June 21-25 Vinexpo 2009 is now history. The more than 2,400 exhibitors from around the globe have taken down their Pharaonic pavilions and stands that filled over 40,000 square meters of conference space. Staffing these exhibit spaces required an army of almost 50,000. They, and the almost equal number of visitors from 135 countries, lived during Vinexpo week on a pretty steady diet of oysters, foie gras, French cheese and freshly baked baguettes, all washed down with Champagne and first-growth Bordeaux wine.

It’s not all hedonistic pleasure, however. Gridlocked roads and the global economic downturn made the 15th example of this bi-annual, international reunion a somewhat tense affair for those in the fine wine and spirit industry. Evidently the pressure got to some as headlines such as “Vinexpo boss denies assault, files own complaint” filled online wine publications even before the exhibition closed its doors. The “assault,” in this case, involved an altercation between an Italian event organizer Anna Sério, whose Italissima wine tasting, featuring Italian wine producers, was held the same week as Vinexpo. The Italissima tent (stark white and befitting an Arab Sheik) was located on the grounds of the Novotel Hotel that is on the same lake that sits between the Vinexpo exhibit halls and the Palais des Congrès where the event’s conferences and tastings are held.

Sério claims that Vinexpo organizers “hid” the wine for her Italissima event and that, when she went to retrieve it, Vinexpo marketing director Jean-François Ley assaulted her. With the aid of the police, Sério recovered her Italian wine and food. The blow to Franco-Italian relations will undoubtedly heal with time, and Sério can take comfort that others, previously relegated to the fringes of Vinexpo, have managed to gain admittance to what is called, by its organizers, the “Signature Business Event” for the wine and spirits trade. In fact it was only two years ago, at the last Vinexpo, that the leading proponent of biodynamic viticulture, Nicolas Joly, was forced to use that very same Novotel Hotel for a tasting of biodynamic wine from around the world. This year Joly organized, as part of the official Vinexpo program, a “Return to Terroir” tasting of over 100 biodynamic wines from ten different countries and virtually all of the French wine regions.

I will write more in the coming weeks about the talk that Joly gave as part of this biodynamic wine tasting, as well as about some other interesting Vinexpo discussions such as “Wine Tourism,” “The future of the American wine market,” and “The impact of the current economic crisis on the global wine industry,” but first I want to recount how a series of serendipitous events brought me in contact with two of the brightest luminaries of the wine world.

During his talk Joly urged all in attendance to try the Georgian wine (naturally, the country of that name, not the US state better known for a sweet, syrupy soft drink) that was part of the “Return to Terrior” tasting. “Why not?,” I thought to myself; when else would I get the opportunity to sample wine from what is reputed to be the oldest winemaking region in Europe. Archaeological evidence indicates that Georgian viticulture extends back to between 7000 and 5000 BC when people from the South Caucasus discovered that wild grape juice turned into wine when it was left buried through the winter in shallow pits. By 4000 BC Georgians were cultivating grapes and burying clay vessels, called kvevri (amphora), which were filled with the fermented juice of the harvest, topped with a wooden lid and then covered and sealed with earth.

Soliko Tsaishvili, Georgian winemaker from the Prince Makashvili Cellar, started my tasting off with a straw-colored white wine made from the Rkatsiteli white grape that is the most important grape variety in Georgia. The 2006 Grand Cru Tsarapi that I tasted was delicious with hints of grapefruit, spices and floral flavors. I tasted the other equally interesting wines that he had on hand—none of which resembled anything else in my wine-drinking experience, and I was about to move on when a shaven-headed man at the adjacent table caught my eye. The table was marked “Slovenia,” and there were three times the number of people around it than at any of the others in the room. Dressed completely in black, with a heavy gold chain around his neck, the man was bobbing and weaving behind his table, his hands gesturing and moving theatrically as he poured glasses of wine in rapid succession to the three-deep crowd in front of him. But one sensed that there was substance behind the show, and when I realized that it was Ales Kristancic, an iconic human dynamo of a winemaker whose reputation for painstakingly non-intervention winemaking and biodynamic agriculture have made his 6,000-case production a cult wine, I got in line behind the others.

Kristancic is the eighth generation of his family to make wine on the Movia estate. Founded in 1820, but in existence since 1700, the 18-hectare estate sits smack dab on the Slovenian-Italian border. The 8-hectare portion on the Italian side is in the Friuli appellation’s Collio Goriziano region (named for the Italian word for hills, colli), while the other 10 hectares is across the border in the Brda province of Slovenia. To Kristancic, and his father, who is also involved in running Movia, it’s just a single appellation called Collio. The part of the estate in Italy has only really been part of Italy since after the First World War, and the Kristancic family takes these geopolitical shifts involving world wars, the Austro-Hungarian empire and Yugoslavia’s creation and break-up in stride. Grapes, it must be remembered, go on growing even during political upheavals.

I managed to squeeze through the crowd, finding a tiny space in front of him. He grabbed a champagne-shaped bottle from an ice bucket and poured some slightly cloudy, pale-salmon-colored wine in my glass. This, he explained to me in his heavy Italian-Slavic accent, was Movia Puro, an undisgorged sparkling wine. Disgorgement, where the sediment (lees) left over from the in-bottle fermentation and that have settled in the bottle neck through the riddling process are removed, is normally one of the final steps in sparkling wine production. The bottle necks are quickly frozen, and the plug of sediment flies out when the cork is removed.

The dangerously creative Kristancic believes that disgorging at the winery, which every other sparkling wine producer does, would remove some of his wine’s flavor. He also says that keeping the sediment in the bottle allows Puro to age indefinitely. So he ships the 2,000 bottles that he produces annually in a special cardboard box that holds the bottle upside down. You place the bottle upside down in a vessel filled with water, and, holding the cork in one hand, you gently twist the bottle with the other. When the sediment is released in the water, you turn the bottle right side up.  As long as that mass of goo has been disgorged properly, the wine in the bottle will be clear—and refreshingly good. The 100% Pinot Nero (Noir) Puro spends 4 years in French oak barrels and a further 32 months in bottle before it is released. The bright, crisp wine has a slightly toasty, yeasty flavor, with lots of apple, berry and grapefruit hints. The mousse from the wine’s finely-carbonated bubbles provides a pleasing mouth feel and contributes to the long, pleasant finish.

He had me next try a 2007 Movia Lunar, a light-orange-colored white wine made from the Ribolla Gialla grape. Smelling of glorious orange blossoms and wet stones, with silky tannins and a captivating texture, this wine’s out-of-this-world name seemed, to me, to be completely appropriate. When he told me that it had been aged for nine months in clay amphorae buried nine meters underground, I knew that I was in the presence of someone dancing on a vinicultural tightrope of his own. Perhaps his artistry comes from his dancing background, as, when I commented about how his graceful movements reminded me of a dancer, he told me that long ago, when he was younger and when Slovenia was still part of Yugoslavia, he had won two medals as a dancer. Kristancic speaks often of “risk” and “passion.” He’s not afraid to take chances such as not adding sulfur to preserve his natural wine creations or deliberately ignoring or breaking many traditional winemaking rules. Naturally, when you take such risks there are sometimes failures, and he admits to having produced the occasional barrel of vinegar. But without risk there would not be such reward.

I had just drained my glass of Puro—no spitting for me when it comes to wines like these, and I was just about to move on to a 2002 Movia Veliko Rosso, when I spotted two obviously English men towards the rear of the crowd. One was shorter than the other, with a balding head and wire-rim glasses, and the sort of acid-etched teeth that come from tasting thousands of wines each month for many years. The taller man had the air of a “handler,” keeping one or two steps behind the other, who was now beginning to attract a crowd. First a woman, who had recognized the shorter of the two men, came bounding across the room to shake his hand. Then, a man in a business suit came up and introduced himself as a Belgian who had purchased a vineyard in Tuscany. How could he get him, he asked, to taste his wine. That’s when it hit me about where I had seen this fellow before. It was on a BBC series featuring the famous English wine writer Oz Clarke and a sidekick buddy, an everyday-sort-of-beer-drinking-bloke, who together tooled around the French wine country in a classic car. Clarke came across as a proper wine snob, while his wild-haired travel companion, who was a car buff and more interested in drinking a beer, provided the essential class-riven balance to make for interesting exchanges such as “I’m getting notes of peaches, intermixed with egret-egg flavors, leading into a cacophony of fruit blossom aromas.” To which the other inevitably responded “It tastes like wine, you twit.”

The one who I was almost positive was Oz Clarke was saying to the other that this was the third time that he had tried to taste this guy’s wine. I’m certain that Kristancic didn’t know that the man now making a determined effort to taste his wine was one of the most famous wine writers in the world. “And if he did know,” I thought, “would he even care given that his wine already has a cult-like following.” I decided to snap a few photos. The flash alerted Clarke to my camera, and me, and I motioned (in fear that he might think that I was a paparazzi) that it was Kristancic, not he, who was the subject of my photos. Both Clarke and the man who I later learned on introducing myself was his publisher, Adrian Webster, turned out to be charming when I managed to introduce myself several minutes later. I learned that Clarke’s brother had a home in France not far from where I live, and we chatted for a minute or two before they went on to another table.

I moved forward again to the table anxious to taste that Movia Veliko Rosso red at last. “You, my friend,” I heard Kristancic say. Seeing that there was no one immediately behind me, I realized that he was speaking to me. “I need to get some more wine and to rinse this bucket,” he announced, grabbing up the empty bottles on the table, along with the clear bucket that he had been using to disgorge his sparkling wine. He told me to pour wine for those who were in line for the tasting.

And that’s how I found myself trying to fill in for one of the world’s most extraordinary winemakers. Kristancic’s confidence in me was quite flattering—but akin to making a barrel of vinegar. His winemaking is such pure artistry and he uses techniques that are so unique that I didn’t have the slightest idea about how to explain how any of the wines were made. And since all of the labels were written in Slovenian, I couldn’t even read, other than the wine name, what they said. So, I poured wine for people to sample, told them that the master would be back shortly, and hoped that no one would notice that a puddle of sweat was forming at my feet as I counted the long minutes until he returned.

I never did get to taste any of his red wines, but, when he returned, Kristancic graciously thanked me and pressed a bottle of 2002 Movia Veliko Rosso into my hands. For helping him out, he told me. That bottle has taken a proud position in my wine cellar, and I’m sure that, when I drink it, I’ll remember the day that I met the Oz and the Wizard of Slovenia.

Tagged as: Vin Expo