2021 Quealy Ribolla Gialla, Mornington Peninsula

Ribolla Gialla is native to Collio and Slovenia’s Brda, where it’s known as Rebula. Plantings are rarely seen outside of the Friuli-Veneto region and neighbouring Slovenia. The most famous expressions hail from Oslavia, where Joško Gravner has forged a formidable, iconic global reputation on the back of his extended maceration Ribolla wines. It’s a naturally vigorous variety and requires control in the vineyard to keep yields in check. The skins are thick and rich in colour and polyphenols, making them ideal for skin-contact styles.
 
Made famous worldwide by the enigmatic Joško Gravner, Ribolla Gialla is responsible for some of Italy’s rarest and sought-after white wines. Yet you won’t find many plantings outside northeast Italy. Time in the region travelling, working, forming strong friendships and absorbing the wine culture meant it was long in the stars for the Quealy team to bring a slice of Italian inspiration home. In 2018, the first Ribolla vines went into the organic soils of Balnarring.

In the sun-soaked conditions of 2021, the Ribolla fruit came off the vine in early April with small berries of deep, sun-flecked colour. Destemmed fruit fermented in open steel tanks on skins, and the wine remained in vessel until the start of September that year. Maturation occurred in seasoned wood on light lees for 30 months before bottling in early 2024. Ribolla Gialla and maceration go hand in hand. Given time on skins, it transforms from something simple and refreshing to something deeply cast, richly textured and complex. More subtle than the two preceding wines on the nose, yet still packed with floral perfume, blood orange, apricot and savoury notes of woody herbs and earth. It’s a mass of sweet, savoury and wild, with lifted fresh, polishing acidity rounding the picture out nicely. A star is born.