Tag Archives: Slovenia

Price: 11-15 bucks, Tasting Notes

Oddball Wine of the Week (Slovenia Edition): Marof Beli Križ

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Here’s another Slovenian wine for the Oddball series. This one blends Welshriesling with Sauvignon Blanc. Welshriesling is not Rielsing with a funny accent. It’s an unrelated (and inferior) grape grown in places like Austria, northern Italy, and a bunch of old Iron Curtain countries: Hungary, Bulgaria, Albania and Czech Republic. According to Oz Clarke’s Grapes and Wines, it produces round, low-acid wine. Let’s see how this one comes together with Sauvignon Blanc.

Marof Beli Križ 2007

Producer: Marof

Grapes: 65% Sauvignon Blanc and 35% Welshriesling

Appellation: Prekmurje (Slovenia)

Vineyards: The name Beli Križ means white cross, which refers to an actual white cross that stands at the point where the three estate vineyards that produce the grapes for this wine come together. The vineyards are: Bodonci, Grad and Mačkovci. Soils, depending on the vineyard, are volcanic or sandy loam.

Vintage: 2007

Winemaking: Stainless steel fermentation. No oak aging.

Alcohol: 12.5%

Price: $11.83 via Garagiste

My tasting notes: The wine is very pale in color. The nose is all stone & stone fruit aromas, with a light lemony perfume. There is also a slight nuttiness. More stone and stone fruit on the palate with a lemon-lime background note and the vaguest whiff of fresh green beans. It finishes very dry with decent length. Despite the lemony citrus notes, the flavors are soft, not aggressive. To my palate on this evening, it is a bit too soft – I could use a little more brightness and acid.

Overall impression: A very drinkable and pleasant wine. Based on the blend, and what I’ve read of Welshriesling, I can’t help but think that I would enjoy the wine more with a higher percentage of Sauvignon Blanc. But it would be interesting to share with someone who finds most Sauvignon Blanc too aggressive and see what they think. Bonus points for getting to use a new diacritical mark on the blog. B-

Free association: Slovenia is in the same group as the USA in the 2010 World Cup. Their match is tomorrow. Let’s hope their defense is as soft as this wine.

More info:

Other reviews at: CellarTracker (mean: 87.7), Cork’d and The Ancient Geek.

Price: 10 bucks or less, Tasting Notes

Oddball Wine of the Week: Slovenian Tocai

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This is the 5th installment of VINEgeek’s Oddball Wine of the Week. Click here for links to each wine in the series.

QuattroMani_Tocai_07_snapshotQuattro Mani [toh-kai] 2007

Producer: Well, the brand is Quattro Mani, which is a label from Domaine Select Wine Estates, an importer. But the wine is made by Ales Kristancic of Movia.

Grapes: 100% Tocai

Appellation: Goriska Brda (DOC, Slovenia). While your first thought (and mine) might have been that Slovenia sounds like a wine backwoods, recall that it shares a border with Italy and the Goriska Brda region is on that border. In fact, this region is virtually an extension of Italy’s Collio DOC.

Vineyard: Exto Gredic. Soils are “Flysch of Collio, with marl and sandstone layers”.  Average vine age is 18 years.

Winemaking: no oak

Alcohol: 12.5%

Price: I paid $9 at Costco in Austin.

My tasting notes: Very rich yellow color, leaning toward orange. Serious spearmint and menthol on the nose overshadowing some basic appley fruit. It’s goes for the odd trifecta (color, nose and palate) with jarring nutty, salty, medicinal notes on top of ripe melon flavors. The wine has an oily texture and the finish is medicinal and seems hot (though it’s only 12.5%), almost like Listerine.

Overall impression: This is one of those bottles that is just so different from what I typically drink that I don’t know how to judge it. I can’t say I really enjoy the flavor profile. But for $9, it was worth it to me just to experience something out of the ordinary. I doubt you’ll make it your house white, but if you’re looking for something unusual, give it a go. C

Free association: Believe it or not, there does not appear to be a single photo of a stick of Wrigley’s Spearmint gum stuck up someone’s nose anywhere on the Internet. WTF, people? Can someone get on that? Instead you get this lazy association…

GeorgeTakei_Sulu

More info:

Big pub scores: Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate – 91 pts, Wine & Spirits – 87 pts and Wine Spectator – 86 pts. (The links are to the importer’s site where they’ve collected the reviews. You ought to click through to the Parker review – it’s pretty over the top. At the end you’re thinking “Only 91 pts? Sounds like a 98-pointer or something.”

More tasting notes at CellarTracker (user Chomsky nails my experience with this wine) and Cork’d.

5 Top Slovenian Wines by Ales Kristancic in Food & Wine.

Here’s an interesting piece from the WSJ.com Food & Drink section on the emerging wine cred of Croatia, Slovenia and other Eastern European countries: The Lure of the Unpronounceable