Collio DOC is a tiny appellation snuggled up against the Slovenian border in north-east Italy. It is a beautiful place. How beautiful? After our recent visit to the region, I noticed that Sue changed her computer’s desktop image to a photo of these hills. Collio replaced another beautiful vineyard area, Cartizze, on the screen, which last year replaced a photo of the Douro Valley. The competition for real estate on Sue’s desktop is fierce. Collio is that beautiful.

2024 marks the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Collio Consortium and we were there to catch up with what is new in this dynamic region, best known for its stunning white wines. This was our fourth trip, having previously visited in 2000, 2015, and 2019. We are grateful to our Colliio Consortium hosts and to everyone who answered our questions and let us sample their wines.

Continuity and Change in Collio

Collio is a region of paradox and contradiction, which makes it very interesting indeed. Start with geography. Colllio is defined by its most distinctive common elements, hills and soil. As the map above (which hangs on Sue’s office wall) shows, Collio is crescent-shaped, with winegrowing concentrated in the hills at the two extremes. The soil profile here is called ponca, stratified marl and limestone rich in minerals and fossils, that resulted from the the rising seabeds that created the hills. Hills and ponca. That’s Collio. Seems pretty simple.

But it is more complicated than that and the wines can have great complexity because of variations in vineyard aspect, grape varieties, clones, blends, and winemaking methods. What seems timeless and simple on first glass is more like a kaleidoscope when examined closely.

And the region and its wines have changed over time, or at least that is how Sue and I have experienced it. We discovered Collio Sauvignon on our first visit and we were swept away by wines like the famous Venica Ronco delle Mele. These wines seemed to us to be a completely different take on this famous wine.

The More Things Change …

We still enjoyed the Sauvignon when we returned in 2015, but other wines caught our attention, including Ribolla Gialla and Friulano. I’m not sure if the style of the Sauvignon had changed or if we were just more open to these new varieties, but it was fun to explore them. Our 2019 visit was focused on Collio Bianco, which are blends of white wines of the region. These white blends were once “kitchen sink” wines meant to use up leftover grapes, but they work so well that they have become signature wines for many producers.

For this trip we explored all of the white wines, including also Pinot Grigio and Malvasia, in blind tastings led by the talented wine writer and Friuli wine expert Richard Baudains. One thing that stood out from the tastings, winemaker meetings,  and winery visits, in addition to the overall excellence of the wines, was the rapid pace of change in the post-covid era. We found a lot to consider. A quick list includes:

• Generational transitions

The Consortium’s 60 years is short in terms of the region’s wine history, but long on the human scale that defines family wineries. As in many parts of the world, this is a time of transition, with one generation seeking to pass the wine torch to another.

Sometimes the generational transitions are smooth, but sometimes less so. Children who have seen how hard their winemaking parents must work often opt for a different lifestyle. Or perhaps they have different ideas about what their wine should be. In Collio, we were told, one of the effects is that more women were finally entering the industry.

• Back to the Future wines

I think the generational transition must have gone well at Polje, for example, where we talked with winemaker Sebastian Juretic while sipping his fine wines and looking our over desktop-worthy vineyard views. He loved the winemaking life with all its travails, but he didn’t want to make wines just like his father had, so we tried his Labuccia, an amphora-fermented Ramato-style wine.

Ramato is a traditional Friuli style of wine, with extended skin contact to create a copper color. Ramato is part of the new Collio but it is rooted in the past. Indeed some say that this region is the cradle of orange or skin-contact wine. Sebastian showed us photos of his grandparents making wines like his, but in old-fashioned open tanks, not sleek stainless steel.

• Investment from outside the region

Several forces are at work driving increased investment in Collio wine from outside the region. Generational change is one of them. This factor was part of the story, we were told, of the iconic Jermann winery’s 2021 acquisition by the Antinori family.

Economic forces are also important. Tenuta Borgo Conventi, for example, is now part of the dynamic Villa Sandi group as that important Veneto wine group has expanded to other Italian wine regions in order to build scale and diversity in its portfolio of offerings. I was discussing this with Borgo Conventi winemaker Paolo Corso over a glass of his fine Sauvignon when I remembered where I had tasted the wine before. It was during a lunch last year at Villa Sandi. The winery executives there were proud to show off this important part of their collection.

This is not a new trend. Collio’s distinctive wines have long attracted attention from outside the region. Attems has been part of the Frescobaldi group for more than 20 years. However, the combination of generational transitions and market forces today seems to be strengthening the investment flows.

Small is Beautiful

Collio is a very small wine region. The Consortium has only about 300 grower and producer members farming 1300 hectares and producing 7 million bottles. Just a drop in the global wine bucket, if you know what I mean.

But the wines are distinctive and differ both from other Italian regions and from each other, but with the hillside and ponca common thread to tie them together. Now more than ever, it’s the kind of place and the style of wines that people are seeking out.

>>><<<

Sue and I send our thanks to everyone who took time out to meet with us during our brief visit to the Collio region. Special thanks to Lavinia Zamaro, Guilia Formichetti, Federica Shir, and Richard Baudains. Cheers to Dutch wine writer Fred Nijhuis, who shared his insights with us during this trip.