Wojciech Bońkowski
Master of Wine

Sutor: a Slovenian star

Posted on 18 March 2011

I need to drink more wine from Slovenia. This tiny 2-million country sandwiched between Italy, Austria and Croatia in a happy geographical position is making some of Europe’s most distinctive and delicious wines these days.

Edvard Lavrenčič. © Marijan Močivnik / Studio Ajd / Sutor.

The big buzz in Slovenia is in Brda, opposite the by now inexistent border of Italian Collio, and Kras, the same as Italian Carso, a limestone terroir yielding fabulously mineral whites (and some reds). Vipava, an appellation located midway between the former two, gets less attention; certainly it lacks Brda’s concentration of fine estates. But there’s one gem: the Sutor estate of Edvard and Mitja Lavrenčič. For a good decade now it has been the source of Slovenia’s best Sauvignon: a wine with the mineral depth of the great Sancerres but a little more fruit.

It’s been a while since I tasted these wines. Two new releases uncorked this week were simply brilliant. The 2008 Sauvignon is a great interpretation of the grape. It is fresh and limpid but avoids the aggressively green notes of Sauvignon: there’s no nettle, menthol or cat pee, just ripe apples and pears and citrus. The acidity is lovely: refreshing and enlivening but not tart; it’s what is called ‘ripe acidity’ in vinous jargon. At 13% this wine is a fantastic compromise: there’s no greenness or aggressiveness but even less overripeness or honeyed richness of late-picked Sauvignon.

The Slovenes have a gift for classy labels.

I can say about the same of the 2007 Burja, a blend of 90% Merlot and 10% Refošk. The presence of the latter in a blend in Slovenia can often result in challenging acidity or green tannins, the variety being a notorious late-ripener. But it works well here. This is one of the least emphatic reds I’ve had of late: there’s not a milligram of noticeable oak, and the tannins are superbly natural and unstretched. If you like big ripe fruity reds, this is not really for you: it focuses on juiciness, drinkability, with just a hint of underripeness in the smokey, leafy, vegetal notes. Yet this character is very well-dosed: it adds freshness but not greenness.

I recently blogged on the crucial importance of timing in grape harvesting. My view is that most modern wines are harvested too late: in search of the elusive (and often misinterpreted) ‘physiological ripeness’, of a high-Parker-score-encouraging superfruity style, of higher alcohol that many vintners in Europe and beyond are absurdly considering a sign of quality. Sutor offers a refreshing solution to this dilemma. Here the harvest time is just perfect: it’s conservative enough to preserve much natural freshness in the wines, and human alcohol levels, and yet the wines taste fruity and ample and deep. A confirmation, if any was needed, that picking slightly earlier needn’t compromise the fruit expression.

‘Burja’ is a famous northern wind that makes Slovenian life difficult.

These Sutor bottlings are not ‘great’ wines (it’s sometimes argued that Sauvignon or Merlot never really make great wines). I can think of more complex and structured examples of either grape. Instead of reaching to elusive intellectual heights, however, Lavrenčič prefers drinkability, a natural balance and a sense of place. It’s ironic that his wines would today seem so conservative and old-style: it shows how much the wine world has gone in the wrong direction of power and density. Sutor reconciles with wine’s original purpose: a refreshing palate-cleansing liquid to be imbibed in generous quantities.

Disclosure

Source of wines: tasting samples from the Polish importer.