Radikon

Stanko Radikon spent the 1990s rethinking almost everything he had been taught about winemaking. The result was a series of decisions that placed him, alongside Josko Gravner from the same village of Oslavia, at the origin point of the modern skin-contact white wine movement: extended maceration on the skins for weeks or months, no sulphur, aging in large Slavonian oak barrels for years, and bottling without filtration.

The estate is ICEA certified organic, and the farming philosophy is as uncompromising as the winemaking. Radikon's Ribolla Gialla, Oslavje, and Jakot — a local name for Tocai Friulano — are wines that challenge the assumption that white wine should be pale, clean, and quick. The extended skin contact produces wines the colour of amber, with tannin structure and an oxidative depth that places them closer to old Sherry or fine Madeira in their aromatic range than to conventional white Burgundy.

The wines have drawn 96 points from Wine Advocate. Stanko Radikon died in 2016; his son Saša continues the estate with the same standards and the same refusal to simplify.

Radikon's influence on the global natural wine conversation — and on a generation of winemakers in France, Australia, the United States, and elsewhere who have experimented with skin contact — cannot be measured in production volume. It is felt in almost every serious wine list in the world.