Dario Princic Sivi Pinot Grigio 2020
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The Land
The 1947 border settlement drew a line straight through these hills, leaving Oslavia's Slovene-speaking farm families on the Italian side, a few hundred meters from Slovenia. Sivi is simply the Slovenian word for gray, the name Pinot Grigio carries at home in this bilingual corner of the Collio, above the town of Gorizia. Prinčič's Pinot Grigio grows on clay and limestone parcels within the estate's roughly 10 hectares of steep, southeast-facing, hand-worked vineyards, from vines the importer lists at an average of 60 years old. Warm days off the Adriatic and cool air from the Julian Alps stretch ripening into a harvest picked entirely by hand.
The Wine
Pinot Grigio's skins are not white; at ripeness they turn a coppery gray-pink, which is why a single week of maceration yields a wine the color of polished copper. The 2020 fermented spontaneously in open wooden vats with no temperature control, the cap punched down by hand for seven days on the skins, then aged 30 months in old oak casks and three more in steel before bottling unfiltered with 15 to 20 mg/l of sulfur, the only addition. Blood-orange peel, apricot, and bruised apple run into black-tea tannin and a saline finish that pulls you back to the glass. In the Collio, 2020 brought a warm, dry summer refreshed by September rains and an unhurried harvest that began in early September, and the vintage's balance shows in the wine's freshness.
The People
Dario Prinčič has farmed without synthetic chemicals since 1988, founded his winery in Oslavia in 1993, and moved his entire production to skin maceration by 2000, following a path he helped establish alongside neighbors Gravner and Radikon. Nothing here is hurried: this Sivi spent nearly three years in the cellar before release, and the estate's steep, dense plantings are trimmed through summer to four or five bunches per vine for concentration. This is a benchmark of skin-contact Pinot Grigio, the maximalist answer to the neutral pinot grigio that made the grape famous.
Food Pairing
Prosciutto di San Daniele, Friuli's own, wants exactly this: salt against orchard fruit, fat against tannin. Seared duck breast with a cherry pan sauce meets the wine's structure the way a light red would. Porcini risotto with plenty of Parmigiano picks up the earthy, steeped-tea side, and miso-glazed salmon plays to its salinity. An orange wine from Friuli with the grip to anchor the whole table, from the salumi board through the main course.
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Weather shipping advisory: Orders placed during times of extreme heat or extreme cold will be held for no charge until more favorable weather returns.
Practicing Organic vineyard farming involves growing grapes using organic methods—avoiding synthetic fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides, and fungicides—but without formal certification. Wineries adopting this approach prioritize environmental health, soil vitality, and biodiversity, using natural practices such as composting, cover cropping, and manual pest control. Many small wineries opt for practicing organic methods rather than pursuing official organic certification, primarily due to the significant cost, paperwork, and time commitment involved in certification processes. As a result, practicing organic is a popular choice among boutique and artisanal producers who remain committed to sustainable agriculture while managing budgetary constraints.
