Vino Bianco IGT Slatnik Radikon 2018 MAGNUM (Orange Wine)

Slatnik Radikon 80% Chardonnay, 20% Tocai, 12 days on the skins, biodynamic wine, complex yet easy drinking orange wine. Radikon Slatnik for a wine of this complexity, you would expect it to be a little heavy going but no, you just can t stop drinking it, 20 mins and the bottle's gone, fabulous stuff! I first drank it after having posed for a natural wine calendar in a 100% natural state! As you can imagine, we all needed a drink after posing nude and the bottle of Slatnik we opened took 5 mins between 3 of us. It is fantastic wine, rich and bold but as with all of Radikon's wines, there is this vein of acid which makes it so fresh. With an open mind, you can drink this as aperitif, with any food, meat or fish, and with nutty Italian cheeses, it is excellent.

Radikon is a 12 hectare estate on the Slovenian border of Italy, and is a truly unique winery. The king of orange wines as far as we are concerned. Stanko Radikon captained this groundbreaking winery since 1995, paving the way for the natural wine movement. He realised that the local indigenous grape, Ribolla Gialla, needed to be treated differently to other varieties so he turned to his grandfather’s method of vinification, which involved seven days of skin maceration. Stanko experimented with this technique and today's wines have around three months of maceration, along with long periods of barrel and bottle ageing. Working this way has meant that he has been able to cut out the use of sulphites entirely. The specially designed bottles allow for better development in bottle, and he only uses the highest quality corks that avoid cork taint. His grape selection is so meticulous, it is usual for a whole vine to go into making just one single bottle. His wines are truly fascinating, with unbelievable complexity, high ageing potential and profound, wild, flavours.

Since Stanko passed away recently, his son Saša Radikon continues in his father's tradition, maintaining the same high standards.