Kabaj "Konde" Goriska Brda Slovenia 2009

During the period when Slovenia was part of Yugoslavia and most wineries sold their grapes to the cooperative, the prices were so low that many gave up grape growing altogether. Zvonko Kabaj saw a different path forward for those who still loved wine. “If the wine of Collio is world famous then certainly we have this same opportunity,” he said. Collio, just across the border in Italy, is identical to Brda in Slovenia. So in the 1970s he smuggled grape vines from Italy’s more pedigreed Collio appellation back across the border. In the 1990s his daughter Katja married Jean-Michel Morel, a Frenchman who grew up in Bordeaux and spent time making wine in Bordeaux and Italy. Jean-Michel and Zvonko replanted vines and did their best to acquire equipment, which was very difficult in the early days of Slovenia’s independence. Few considered the Kabaj’s winemaking aspirations a good idea. Zvonko passed away in 1997 but his pipedream has turned into one of the most respected wineries in the area, Italian or Slovenian. Kabaj is mentioned alongside names like Movia, Gravner, and Radikon as some of the most ageworthy, distinctive skin-contact wines in the world. We even have some longtime customers who named their dog “Kabaj” after visiting the winery a few years ago. The farming is equally world-class, with regenerative, no-till practices and no herbicides or pesticides. Horse manure is the only fertilizer and even organic sprays like copper and sulfur are used as little as possible. The winemaking is essentially pre-industrial and heavily influenced by Jean-Michel’s travels to Georgia in the 1990s, including a lot of amphora and skin-contact on all the whites.

We taste a lot of wine to curate our shelves, and "Konde" was hands down one of the most memorable and unique wines we've tasted in years. A blend of Rebula, Malvazija, Zeleni Sauvignon, Beli Pinot, and Sauvignon Blanc, it spent six months on the skins in qvevri, and then 13 years in barrique, where a layer of flor formed, which is the same thing that occurs in Sherry or the Jura for Vin Jaune. It has a very intense nutty quality, with balsamic, cream cheese, orange peel and mesquite notes with earthy, cacao textural elements. It is transportative to, I don’t know where exactly, but nowhere I’ve ever been on this astral plane. It’s not just weird and provocative, however — it’s balanced and elegant, with a sophisticated expression that is a testament to the vision and quiet, assured courage of Jean-Michel Morel and Katja Kabaj. They have been raising the bar for Slovenia for quite some time and the rest of the wine world is now seeing that this may be the cutting edge of singular winemaking. Jeremy Hernandez and Jonathan Kemp