Ep. 85 Monty Waldin interviews Mateja Gravner (Gravner Winery) | Discover Italian Regions: Friuli Venezia-Giulia

Italian wine podcast. Chinching with Italian wine people. Hello. This is the Italian wine forecast. My name is Montelord. And my guest today is Mattea Grabna from the Grabna winery in the Fruri region in Italy. Welcome. Hi. Now you come from a very, very famous winery. How did you get involved with the family business? I was born there, which is quite easy to understand, but I just started working with my father in the winery three years ago. And your father's name is? Joshua. His official name is is Franchesco. At home, we speak the van. You maybe know we are right on the border and there are a lot of people speaking to the van. But when my father was born in fifty two, it was forbidden to give any forensic names, in Italy. So his official name is Franchesco, but everyone knows him Jorskop. So it's funny because often people ask me, seeing the label who is actually Francesco to your fa father has a brother. No. It's just he, he, and himself. So what was your real in in Italian, what would your name be then? Jorschka, it comes from Jorghef, and this, in Italy Italian would be Bepepe. Bepepe. Okay. And, but, and Mattea, what's your name? Mattea is the family of, Metio, when I was born, finally, it was possible to choose the names. So you're called you then? Now in Italian, there there is Matair, which is quite close, but it's not so common. You know, my real name is Matthew as well. Yes. Everyone calls me Monty. Why? Well, that's another long story because of my sense of humor monty python, but we we we got new show coming up and about that. Okay. So you were you're working with a family winery, so your winery is well known for a particular style of wine called orange wine. How did that come about? What's funny strange to understand is why why so many people believe that four two thousand. We were involved in something else. So often people don't remember or or don't know. We started producing wise in nineteen hundred one. Actually, the family was before working. We were just farmers. In nineteen hundred, one, like grandfather bought the house we, we live in. Which was in Slovenia at the time? The time was also Ghana in Pier. Austro Hungarian empire? Yes. So the the name Graner comes from German. It seems that the family come from South Bavaria between seven, sixty hundred. But everyone speaks LaVain, so we are a good mix of, European people. The, my grandfather bought this house because he's family, so the Grand Grand grandfather family become a little bit bigger. And one of brother's, my grandfather, bought this house and start his own farm. At the time, he used to produce some, fruits, basically, cherries on the apricots and, grapes for wine. We had some calls, some pictures, just normal farmers. After the second world in our area. The first and the second world were very, very difficult. The production moved quite quickly in more grapes despite Charis and apricots. And with the 70s, we had no animals anymore. At the time, there was were produced in, pork bottles, salt, and olive water. We had, anastelia, some of the wines were sold there. So you were sending wine with the food directly from the from the vat, from the from the wood barrel. Yeah? It caught them in the, life completely changed in the sixties. My aunts, my father had four aunts, were actually the first generation, we were not in recovery side going to the university, which is very positive, but changed completely the the work in a in a farm. With the late sixties, people, they were used to come to the winery to taste the winery to to choose to choose wines. Stop tasting our wines because they were supposed to be to reach in color to go a dish, they were not fermented on the skins, but they were not exactly paper white. The market started asking paper white wise. For my grandfather was something difficult to understand. So he said what what happened to people that in few weeks, few months, or are not any more able to taste the wines. Just seeing the product, they started, say, no, I don't like them. People, they were buying our rights for years. My father just finished the when making school. He went to took his father and said, you are old. You don't understand the market. So he took away all the big bottles of he started producing in a modern way. So there was a complete revolution between your your grandfather. When your father took over from his father, your grandfather, Weinstein, completely changed at the Gravna winery. Yes. Because the market wife was asking for this, maybe my father was already to change. What he he learned at school that it was possible to produce high quantity with high quality. My grandfather and father already said that either quality or quantity, having the data was impossible. But my father was twenty, a lot of energy, a lot of Attitude. He started producing in seventy three first bottling. So every year, what my father tried to do was to use all the technology available. And, you know, technology is once you start using, it's it's still old. So you always have to upgrade what you are doing. The first important change come in eighty two my father for the first time made, the green harvesting. Of course, he didn't invent that it. But he was the first one rohing getting in our village in Osavia. Osavia is such a small village. They are about five hundred people living there, but there are seven wine for elderly people was very difficult to accept the Greek harvesting because these people used to start during the two wars. And doing the green harvesting means you select the grapes. You don't accept all the the grapes their natural is giving you. So for people, they used to start not accepting what the natter is giving. It was something very difficult to understand. And some elderly people were crying seeing what my father was doing. But the quality changed so quickly that the most people understood and most of them are now doing like, like this. In the eighties, my father traveled a lot, he introduced the small bars, you know, you need to recall them barics, but in a different way, he started fermenting the wines in borrows preserving them is more barrels for the first year. And the second year is Dallas steel tech. So so he moved the boat link up to two years after the harvesting. Was that also a big shock for local people that, you know, he does the green harvest okay. We get used to that. Then he brings these French barrels in. Was that a real shock? I think this wasn't that shocking. They already knew he was a bit of a wild guy. Yeah. Maybe they get used about what he was made, but it was not so difficult was much more difficult, the green harvesting. In eighty seven, my father made his first trip to Napa Valley in the eighty's California, Napa Valley was supposed to be a kind of wonderland for wines, and my father wanted to see what was happening there. For him was a shock. Like always, US are the best and the worst part of everything. And when he was back, and mom asked him, what did you learn? He said what we don't have to do because he tasted the first wine for him. This was the first wine, was a sauvignon with some chemical added aromas. For him, it was difficult to understand. Why why should you add aromas to wine? It's a drink. It's not any more wine, but the trip was in June lot of works. So once he wasn't back, he wasn't thinking about anymore about the this sovignum, until a few months later, he tasted the first sovignum, producing freely in which one he recognized the same aroma. And this was for him, the end because he decided he understood that if this was the only possible future for wine, he didn't want it to be part of this kind of future. So, basically, what he felt was if if if if he wine grows on different continents, one in America and one in Italy, they both make a sauvignon blanc that tastes exactly the same that was what depressed him. Not only to a farmer's market on Dubai, an apple, which has a a strawberry taste. What's the point? So the good thing he brought from Napa Valley was the idea about organic farming. We live in such a small village that pollution was never hasn't been and in their a problem. But we started thinking about this, and slowly we moved to a organic production. There was still another thing which was for my father difficult to understand. We moved to the organic production because we always eat a lot of grapes. And we understood that if we were spraying them and eating dank, we were just poisoning ourselves. It's very simple, but it's very stupid to do. Eating so many grapes, we perfectly know the taste of every single variety, but ovinean wine should taste like sauvignan grapes, chardonnay from chardonnay Merlo from Merlo. Ribola, which is the grape, which is grown in our, our area since more than one thousand years, has never had the Ribola grape taste. And this was, for my father, difficult to understand because why did Ribola never had the taste of Ribola grape? Ribola has a little bit bigger berries and has a very thick skin. So if you press it too gently, you extract a very neutral wine with almost no taste, no character. If you press it too hard, you extract a bitter. Taste, which is, again, not the ribola taste. So every year during the harvesting, the deal was how to manage perfectly the pressing of ribola grapes. In the early nineties, my father started doing the first taste about ribola fermented on the skins, but you know, harvest it's the craziest time in every winery. So he never had the opportunity to follow this work as he deserved. Until ninety six, in ninety six, we had a very strong hairstorm between June ninety and twenty, which we lose the five percent of our grapes. At the time, we were working on eighteen hectares and the average production was between forty, forty five thousand boilers. We never released the vintage ninety six. We don't buy grapes we don't buy wines. With the grapes, you have been able to harvest. My father made the taste about the revolver. So he fermented the Ebola on the skins and without skins. On the skins with selected this, on the skins with not hard at least and the same without skins. So they were four Ebola, wise fermenting at the same time. Aman in Spring ninety seven, my father tasted the four revolas, and he tasted Ribola fermented on the skins with no added yeast, he finally found the taste of the rimola grape. And since Ribola, which was the most difficult grape to work with, reacted so well to the skin fermentation, he believed that everyone would benefit from this kind of fermentation. In nineteen seven or lower white grapes have been fermented on the skins. At the time, skin fermentation was four days. Today, four days is not supposed to be skin fermentation, but in ninety seven, seven was completely crazy. In two thousand, it was for twelve days. In ninety seven, my father made the first fermentation in a small, for aqua, very technically, coming from Georgia, from the Russian Georgia. When he has seen how well the fermentation, how naturally the fermentation was working in such a small clay vessel buried in the soil, he believed that every grape would love to be fermented in this way. He worked to Georgia only in two thousand, at the time was not so easy to reach Georgia, and he tried to find some people still able to produce, for us. In two thousand, in May two thousand, he went to Georgia. He found some people. He bought some offers. We had to organize everything by ourselves because no one was producing offers anymore. No one was exporting or shipping offers. He was back dreaming about having the vintage two thousand permitted in amherst. Sadly, the first strap with eleven amherst arrived in November, which was too late, but this is the good part because the horses that from eleven amherst nine were completely broken. He went again. He bought more offers. It took us five years to collect all the offers we needed, but the vintage two thousand to one was partially fermented in offers. The big difference between fermented grapes in alphas or wood is that the alphas are in the ground. So the soil is controlling the temperature. There's no human intervention need. And in two thousand, the skin fermentation was over three months. Nowadays, the wild is preserved on the skins between five and six months. This is the big difference between wood and a noun for us. We believe that the skin is the mother of wine and then longer a wine can be preserved with the mom's skin than better for for the wine. What your father's done and what your family have done is become much copied in, the wine world. How difficult is it you being almost the sort of flagship winery of this revival in am for a wine, orange wine, natural wine. Is that is that a big pressure on your shoulders as a family? Or were you just happy that other people are following? No. We're very happy that other people follow. I think they don't follow us. They follow an idea. I'm very happy when we find someone using this idea and making this idea different in his own way. I don't like people copying, but it's not because how to say. We have the royalties, not about this. It's about if you copy you don't have your own idea. Obviously, when you see other people, you see other things, you can be inspired by them. But then you should use this idea and find your own way to express this. So when I find people young or elderly. It's really not important. They they have an idea, and they find a good way to express, express this idea. I think this is always positive. We have seen so many people in all the all over the world from Japan in Brazil. In US, they are more and more producers doing or in this way. Often people ask me what's for me a good wine. It's not necessary one, which is fermented on the skins, or which is fermented in Alphra, which is age for a long period. I think it's a one which really expressed the idea and the tour of where it has been born. This is, I think, the most important. Otherwise, we have wines from California, from Freule, from South Africa from New Zealand, they have almost the same taste. What's the point then in choosing one region or another one? Yeah. When it's interesting, your family history, your father went to America, he had an idea, then he went to Georgia, had an idea, then he went back to Italy, Slovenia, whatever your to call it. And then that idea has gone kind of global if you like. So it's amazing how this kind of first cross fertilization of, of of winemaking practices can really take effect quite quickly because it's been a very, it's very sudden a change, hasn't it this, fashion for orange, yellow, natural wines? It has been in a few years, many producers. I think the wine world was ready for this. So there were so many small producers. They've felt oppressed by the big industry. Often people believe that we are against progress. It's not true, but there is a good progress, a faster computer, a faster plane, better surgery, and there is a progress which is not accepted by our body. All the things you introduce in yourself should be the simpler they can be because our body, despite the millennials we are here, hasn't had time to digest microchips. So we believe that in things we eat, in things we drink, we should really be careful about what we are choosing. More and more, more producers, not only wine producers that started in the mid nine this early two thousand to think about this. So I think my father was one of the first was not. I think it's always hateful to say it was the first. There were so many other people working on this. It's really not important to know who was exactly the first. They were so many people working on this that maybe they just needed a kind of leader, which was still recognized as a good wine producer, which completely changed the way he used to produce wines in order to be a little bit impacted to the real environment. Okay. I'm gonna ask you one question about the vineyard. I could ask you a million questions, but I'll ask you just one normally in wine growing, wine growers really don't like having botritus or fungal disease organisms. How does your dad manage that? What does done to actually be to encourage fungal disease organisms. My grandfather, when we were harvesting in the seventies, in the eighties, Yoshko pretend everyone to take out every single berry, which was not perfect. My grandfather used to say to my father, we are wasting the best part of our harvesting. In ninety eight, for the first time, my father just started using the multiple types of scrapes and he understood his father was right. If possible, we really like to have both exercise grapes. The problem is that you can't order them because you need special or perfect weather condition. If possible, we preserve them. We don't use any chemicals in the spray to avoid it, so to preserve the the grapes. The problem is that if it strange too much, you risk to have a lot of rotten berries. We accept the risk. We believe it's much more important to have high quality grapes despite having a little bit more. Did he not create like a wetland area where the this is the home for the fungal organisms, not not not like a pond, and not a pickle or laggle, Nadia. Yes. But this is, we, in our vineyard, we introduced many years ago ponds, but not in order to have more vitrides. And because we understood we had less and less bugs. It can seem stupid, but in the nineties, we understood that we were wasting our soil. So we reduced the number of, vines. We widened the terraces in order to have more space for other trees, and we started which kind of birds used to live in our area. We introduced artificial nest because, you know, we clean so much the the environment, the the fields that birds had no more possibility to build their own nest. And if they don't have nests, they don't have babies. It's not easy. So we introduced artificial nests, and we have more and more birds. Last year, we had all around the house and on the seller, thirty four natural nests. This year, they were fifty two. So every year, it's a big increase. Often producers are scared about birds because they say they eat grapes. It's not exactly true. Maybe partially even because ribalo has a very thick skin, so it's not very easy to eat for birds. But birds, it's grapes when they are thirsty, you know, because they are hungry. So we introduce ponds in our our vineyard and water is the origin of life. So we have mosquitoes, we have normal insects, but they come to the pond to eat mosquitoes. They preserve the vineyard's clean. So it's it's just a a good cycle in order to reduce the impact we have to an environment week. Of course, we produce scrapes. So we need to grow vineyards, but we believe that our happy vine can give you better grapes. Perfect. Mate, good afternoon. Thank you very much for coming in, talking about your happy vines, happy birds, happy insects. Happy bonds. It's a fantastic family story. You really are pioneers in the world of wine. You're globally acknowledged, I think, for the unique contribution you've made to wine, and long way that continue. Thank you. We hope to have even kept because at this point. So you've got a very happy podcast, so I can tell you. Thank you. A brilliant interview, E. Really nice to talk to you and listen to you. Thank you, Eva. For impasse, guys. Follow Italian wine podcast on Facebook and Instagram.