NO WINEMAKER HAS SHAPED THE NATURAL WINE SCENE LIKE MLADEN ROŽANIĆ IN RECENT YEARS. WITH A MAXIMUM OF KNOWLEDGE, HE BRINGS WINES TO BOTTLES WITH A MINIMUM OF INTERVENTION.
Mladen Rožanić gives his wines as much time as they need to harmonize on their own. “Patience is a fantastic cellar technique”, he says. “Because wines need time to find each other.” He works tirelessly on the completion of his vision of earnest natural wine, created with love and minimal intervention, using long forgotten and neglected, ancient vinifying skills, he applies now for more than 20 years.
The high-tech Roxanich cellar is located inside the hill, directly beneath the hotel. Each of its four levels is dedicated to a certain part of the winemaking process – vinification and maceration, ageing, and archiving. The grand finale is the tasting room, where one can immerse calmly and deeply into the whole universe of the Roxanich wine experience.
Roxanich’s viticulture follows Rudolf Steiner’s Biodynamics philosophy, and picking is based on organoleptic assessment. Attention is paid to moon phases and days which dictate when to plant, prune and harvest, following Maria Thun’s calendar.
Roxanich produces natural wines from both indigenous and internationally recognized grape varieties, in line with highest ecological standards, growing and cultivating the grapes using traditional methods of yield control, practicing minimal intervention. In the vineyard - only natural elements like copper and sulphur are admitted in minimal quantities, and in the cellar - sulphur only symbolically when needed.
At Roxanich Winery, wines are aged in large wooden vats and barrels. This minimizes the area of contact of wood and grape and greatly reduces the infusion of wood tannins into the wine. The barrels and vats are reused as long as the wood remains healthy. This serves to further reduce the hydrolysable tannin emissions.
The result places the wood in its intended role. It becomes a micro-oxygenation membrane, introducing the oxygen into the wine in a natural and controlled manner. Synthetic chemicals are absent from Roxanich’s cellar. Sulphites are kept to minimal, necessary amounts, and the barrels are treated only with natural beeswax.
Grapes are vinified in specially shaped barrels, wooden vats of 55 to 75 hl capacity, where fermentation and maceration take place. After pressing and first decanting, the wine is reracked in these same vats as well as 36 hl casks where it is kept to age and mature for years. The wines are characterized by long skin contact which varies from vintage to vintage – 4 to 8 weeks for the reds, and for the whites from a day up to six months.
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