Vinery

The RADIKON vinery is located in Oslavia, on the plateau that goes from the bridge on Isonzo river, near Gorizia, to San Floriano hill. In this area, the nearest to the Front line, were held some of the cruellest battles of the WWI.

Immediately after the WWII, Franz Mikulus started to newly set up the fields and the vineyards system, mainly with Ribolla grapevine, the ancient grapevine, typical of Collio area.

In 1948 Edoardo Radikon married Sofia, Franz Mikulus‘s daughter and started a new phase for the farming business, introducing others excellent grapevines as Tocai Friulano, Pinot Grigio and Merlot.

In 1980 Stanislao Radikon rules the business: he starts to bottle the wine, that since then was sold unbottled.

Production system evolves quickly. In the late Eighties the technology development enables to use steel to produce fresh vintage wines. Stanko (Stanislao), however, doesn’t value much longer this production way: for the cask-aging he re-instate wood, that his father diffusely used, and carries in the cellar the first barriques.

In 1995 production method changes drastically: Stanko starts using truncated-cone shaped vats, with 25 – 35 hl capacity, where white grapevines macerate. Our grandpas widely used this technique (maceration on skins) to produce wines that could resist oxidation and we reintroduced and developed it along. We tried different-length macerations (from 4 days to 9 months) then definitely choose a 3- 4 months maceration time. After devatting and light pressing, wine settles in big oak casks (30 - 35 hl) for about 3 years, then there is a 9-month fining in bottles and finally the wine is put on the market.

Long skin-maceration have been proved to cause a bigger extraction of tannin and other grape compound; that is why long-macerated wines have very intense colour, contain natural antioxidants for wine preservation and do not need further chemic preservatives such as sulphur dioxide. Since 1999 some of our wines are produced and bottled without preservatives adding, since 2002 all wines are. The little amount of sulphites are therefore produced during alcoholic fermentation with an all-natural process.

Radikon philosophy in the vineyards is the same as in the cellar: since the early Nineties we have not used chemical manures, but only organic products, allowed by the Code for organic farming. New vineyard systems are very dense (7000 – 10000 vines per hectare) so that the grapevine is forced to produce a smaller amount of increased-quality grape. The vineyards in the farming business (about 12 ha) are laying on steeply sloping soil, typical for the Collio Goriziano, with excellent South, South-east exposure. On this type of soil almost all farming works are hand-made.

Wines that Radikon vinery produces are:

Ribolla Gialla Merlot

Jakot (Tocai Friulano) Pignolo (available for sale within a few years)

Oslavje (Pinot Grigio, Chardonnay, Sauvignon)

Thank you for your choice.