Skerk Istriana Malvasia (Orange Wine) 2017

Skerk Istriana Malvasia (Orange Wine) Natural wine, long Skin Contact, rich and expressive, delicious Carso wine. Like all his wines, the Malvasia from Skerk is unfiltered and combines skilfully interwoven oak with minerality, intense fruit and confectioner’s cream on the palate. NB This wine is slightly cloudy in appearance due to the unfiltered bottling (which preserves the flavour) and a minimum of racking (moving the wine from barrel to barrel) during the maturation process, it is not a fault and indicates the very natural production method of this wine. A vine of Greek origin which is well known in the Mediterranean area and which has existed in the Carso region since ancient times.

Sandi Skerk took over from his Father Boris, like many in the Carso, their production is very small, totally natural and involves skin contact with indigenous white varieties.

Friuli is a veritable feast of natural, artisan wine production where orange wines are the norm and wild yeasts used without question. Sandi produces some of the regions best, delicious textural wines with great personality, plenty of depth and friendly richness which them more approachable than some of the wines of his contemporaries. This might be due to the fact that Sandi uses oak for fermentation and ageing rather than concrete or Amphoras. This softens the wines and adds a touch of luxury creaminess to the texture. His are orange wines but not in the extreme. The Vitovska is more of a skin contact white rather than orange being deep gold in colour and without the heavy tannin of full blown orange. Ograde on the other hand, you feel more of the skin and the colour is certainly more orange, rusty than gold. The superb Malvasia is somewhere in the middle. Orange or not, Skerk's wines are simply delicious so buy em and drink em!