MEET MLADEN ROŽANIĆ
WINEMAKER'S
STORY
Mladen Rožanić is perhaps best described as the first movie director of wine.
Mladen displays his own handwriting - outsider in the wine business - thinking honest but big, and creating equally honest but big wines. He creates spaces for taste-jumps never seen before, delicate and elegant, unified in one single glass of wine.
His contemporaries yearn after formal perfection, but he forces no corset upon himself. He remains unsharp and unfinished by intention, as he considers his wines as stages. On those stages he directs plays inspired by his observations of nature and people: from comedies and entertainment, to dramas and big festival cinema, way above such definitions du jour as “natural” or “orange” wines.
Mladen’s wines are in constant movement, always dancing into the focal point, they simply alert your attention.
A single glass of his masterpieces often catches the whole scene, transforming effortlessly from first to last sip.
In Mladen’s wines you discover intensive personal experiences like the happiness of your first kiss, or the sorrow from your last break up.
Or better even: Do you remember the taste of your first sushi bite, after growing up on pizza and hamburgers?
His reality is fluid, as if the world was created at this very moment in front of his own eyes, trickling from his pipettes, unstoppable and inevitable.
Like award winning festival movies, lined up one by one, his 20 plus different wine labels and patiently aged vintages keep peacocking
in his wine cellars.
The collection is too plentiful to be experiences at once by a single wine lover. Like watching a movie from the grand era of Panavision, a simple snapshot is not possible: Each of the wines develops an own narrative, and plays a different role.
Mladen paints real life with his wine, obsessed with exploring its soul and its love.
“I like to share my brush strokes when I vinify because there is nothing to hide. Just to share”, says Mladen.
Awakening the Soul of Wine
Mladen’s followers must take time and invest real dedication to travel between the different stages he offers to spectators, a travel for the eyes as well as for the taste buds.
Just as he himself takes all the time in the world to develop these creations, stubbornly countering today’s fast, aggressive commercial production outputs.
Mladen Rožanić goes the radically opposite path and 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.
“I pursue a new vision for winemaking. To achieve that, I need to change the awareness of wine lovers. Why should winemaking always promise the ideal interpretation of reality, and not depict the reality itself?
My wines are honest, raw yet delicate as nature itself.”
Only to be calm in the knowledge that - by his own design - it will never be finished.
As his 6 daughters, the famous Roxanich Sorelle, are slowly but surely taking over the family legacy and opening a completely new chapter for the future, the same way as it was performed since the 1200’s, when this old Venetian family’s elegant, certainly understated but certainly exiting voyage through the soul and the culture of our times started. In the meantime, Mladen himself never stops exploring the world of wine:
”I WANT TO AWAKEN THE PERCEPTION OF WINE, UNDERSTANDING IT AS NATURE INTENDED IT. I WANT TO EXPLORE ITS MEANING, AND TRANSFER THIS COGNITION TO WINE LOVERS.
I AM RETURNING TO THE ORIGIN, AND I ALWAYS DISCOVER SOMETHING NEW.”
Mladen Rožanić embodies that fiery passion for one’s art. Skills honed in a relentless pursuit of knowledge, hard work and love, are that secret ingredient of each bottle of wine he creates.
Rožanić, with the bespectacled intensity of a jeweler examining gemstones for flaws, has poured a lifetime into developing his family’s winery.
A disciple of Rhône Valley winemakers, from young age Rožanić engaged on a global pilgrimage of different houses before finally settling back in his native Istria.
“Everything around us is defined by a constant shift. We see no good reason that wine should taste exactly the same year after year.”
Mladen Rožanić
Mladen’s vineyards have historically valued lays, recognized since ancient times: Mondellebotte (Bačva), Bussure and Valle are historically known as “best grounds”.
The lay’s proximity to the sea shore, yet 200 meters above the sea level, allows us to benefit from a classical thermal exchange.
The slopes of his family vineyard are gentle, with light breezes even at the height of summer and benefit from cool breezes from the mountains to the sea during the night, and from the sea back inland during the day.
Mladen Rožanić guides you through different stories behind the Roxanich brand
Rox Interview
Rox Interview
Mladen Rozanic’s entrepreneurial spirit / Reasons for winemaking
“No wine without time” / The traditional Roxanich winemaking philosophy
Freedom by Nature / Each Roxanich vintage is different
