Skerlj Vitovska
In a small village on the Triestine Karst, a stone's throw from the Adriatic and just north of Trieste, sits Skerlj, a small family owned and operated winery. With 2.5ha of vineyards that have been carved from the surrounding dense forest, Kristina and Matej Skerlj farm the land that has been in their family for generations.
In the vineyard local varietals (Vitoska, Malvasia and Terrano) are planted to soils of terra rossa over limestone, and all of the work is done manually, including the harvest that is conducted at the hands of the family's steadfast older generation.
After learning winemaking from his father, who still works at the winery with his wife Danila, Matej committed himself to natural winemaking by conducting uncontrolled fermentations with indigenous yeast in old oak barrels, yielding wines that are unfiltered and unfined. In a cellar that's been dug from stone, the wines here are aged in stable conditions for two years in used oak barrels and racked after one year before they're bottled. The winery produces approximately 4,000 bottles annually.
