Twenty years of fully organic farming at Barbana by Katja and Matjaž Kramar, both trained painters, with spontaneous ferments and their own cured meat and cheese made on the property.
Tip: Visiting hours follow the gallery rather than the cellar: Friday from 16:00, Saturday from 12:00, Sunday midday to 16:00.
Address: Barbana 12, 5212 Dobrovo v Brdih, Slovenia, Brda
A Snežatno farm-stay with an organic cellar, a kitchen built on Brda dishes and eight guest rooms each named after a grape variety grown on the property.
Tip: Tasting and dinner both need booking in advance, and vegetarian or vegan meals can be arranged the same way.
Hand-picked fruit, spontaneous ferment on native yeast for five to thirty days, two to three years on the lees in acacia, mulberry, wild cherry and oak, then bottled unfiltered.
Tip: Sulphur goes in only once, after the wines are racked off the lees into steel, and the dose is kept very low.
A Kozana family cellar working with minimal intervention and no additions beyond a small sulphite dose, in two ranges called Classic and Gmajna.
Tip: The vines are cropped to around a kilogram of fruit each, and three tasting formats run from Classic up to Superior.
The Kristančič cellar at Ceglo ferments without added yeast and bottles unfiltered, on the stated principle that what nature gives beats what the winemaker adds.
Tip: The Lunar Ribolla is the extreme end of the house style and costs three times the standard Ribolla.
Klinec protects its wines with sulphur only once, after racking off the lees into steel, and bottles a few months later unfiltered and at a very low sulphur level.
Tip: Vineyard treatments run to herb, plant and seaweed extracts, acid clays, silicates, whey and limited copper sulphate and sulphur.
Nothing is added to the Reja wines except a small dose of sulphite, which puts the Kozana cellar at the low-intervention end of the Brda spectrum.
Tip: Kontrabant lists the cellar among the DOK Brda houses, which is the easiest weekend to taste the Classic and Gmajna ranges side by side.
