While in Slovenia recently our Wine Director, David Allen MW, visited the Marjan Simcic Winery in Brda. For today’s tasting he shows us a bottle of their Opoka’ Trobno Cru Merlot 2018.
Maran Simcic is arguably Slovenia’s leading Wine producer. The family-owned winery was founded in 1860 by Jožef Simčič and is located in the village of Ceglo. The estate is run by the eponymous Marjan Simcic and his wife Valeria. Marjan took over the running of the estate from his father in 2008, representing the fifth generation of his family to be winemakers here since Jožef Simčič bought first pieces of land.
Today Ceglo lies just to the east of the border of Italy in the Brda wine region. The Brda wine region borders the Collio region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia in Northern Italy, in fact prior to the border moving Brda was part of Collio. As a result a portion of Marjan Simcic’s 18 hectares of vineyards are actually located in Italy.
The estate’s diverse soils allow them to grow a broad range of varieties with Ribola, Sauvignon Vert, Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Grigio, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir & Merlot. The wines produced are mostly varietal; wines In three ranges the Brda Classic range, the Cru Selection & a range of single vineyard wines labelled as Opoka Cru after the predominant local soil type.
To find out more about this wine, its pricing and where to buy it follow this link to the Wine-Searcher website: https://www.wine-searcher.com/find/marjan+simcic+opoka+merlot+goriska+brda+primorsk+slovenia/2022
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hello there for today’s tasting I’m taking a look at a Merlo from Slovenia the winery this is from is Marian simic this is their apoca crew and this is from the trno crew it’s the 2018 vintage of that and this is from the BDA region and BDA is a region whose name translates as Hills it was once part prior to change in the boundary at the end of the second world war of the Italian wine region Colo which is in fi Venia Julia and again Colo meaning Hills Marian simic is relatively small family-owned Winery run by Marian and his wife Valeria and Marian took over the winery in 2008 he’s the fifth generation of his family to be the wine maker here the winery was founded in 1860 by ysf simic and they have they have 18 hectares of vines of which quite a large proportion actually are in Italy I mean there’s an open border here so there there’s not a huge amount of difficulty moving between the two countries and so it’s practical to be able to manage The Vineyards in both areas but they have quite a diverse set of teras as you can imagine in a region whose name means Hills there are lots of different exposures of vineard with different aspects and plenty of different soil types so this enables the the winery to to produce quite a large number of wines from different varieties so they make wines from ribola they make wines from Sor ver from Sor Blanc from pinio and from chard and also from P Noir and Merlo the winery’s range of wines is divided into three so they have an entrylevel varietal wine simpler Burda classic a regional varietal wine then they have their crew selection one which are either from Individual Crews or I think a couple of them are actually a blend of more than one crew but they they’re more or less Vineyard specific then the winery’s top range are the wines they call the aoka crew and aoka is a a local word referring to a soil type it’s a sort of quite crumbly Sandstone perhaps you’d say mudstone which is found as part of the top soil in most of their best Vineyard so this for instance is from the trno crew so it’s a single Vineyard wine many of the wineries Vineyards this is wine that comes from relatively old Vines the the vines in this Vineyard are 37 years old and evidently the Clone planted here is the same as is found at petruse in pomal the vineyard is about 130 m above sea level it’s got a Southeast exposure and viticulture here is practiced organically and biodynamically but I believe they’re still working towards certification or certainly they were in 2018 the fruit for this wine is entirely handpicked there’s some very careful selection goes on to ensure only healthy and fully ripe fruit is used ripeness is important here because 30% of the fruit that goes into the fermenting vat goes in as whole bunches and that’s quite unusual with moo because it’s unusual that you can get the the pedicels the the Woody part of the Great Bunch ripe enough for that to work in varieties like Mero and cabinet seol so presumably only the ripest have done that the remaining 70% is crushed and fermentation takes place in 5,000 lit stainless steel tanks fermentation is entirely done with indigenous yeast so the natural microflora coming into the winery on the fruit and that that’s already present in the winery is what starts the fermentations here and the Skins stay in the Vats for something like 28 days prior to pressing once pressed the wine goes into French Oak bercks and about 30% of those are new every year then the wine is allowed to age for 4 years in Barrel so that’s quite a long period to leave a wine aging in small Oak the wine this bottled unfiltered and I note that this is bottle 1,98 now I know there were somewhere in the region of 5,066 bottles made so quite a limited production wine so let’s see what it’s like shall we firstly looking at the color we’ve got a deep dark wine that is pretty much opaque I can just about make out the a glimmer of the stem is looking through it but only just swirling it you’ve got a deep and Darkly colored Ruby wet red wine that as I swirl it is clinging quite tenaciously to the glass you can see the color in the wine running back down the down the the glass there it is staining the inside of the glass so let’s see what we make of the aroma shall we there’s a richness a ripeness and quite a a classy note to the Aromas there’s a ripe red to Black Plum fruit quite a rich note that has hints of chocolatin there’s quite a lot of concentrated licorice in there but there are also lifted almost a touch leafy elegant red plum top notes to the perfume here it’s all very fresh there aren’t notes of raisins or anything like that there may be just a hint of cedar but it’s very well integrated with the the the quite fresh red fruit on the Aromas so let’s taste there good acidity the wine has a fine grainy structure with cedar notes and there’s a sort of a Dusty grip there that’s sort of slightly closing up the front palette at the same time there are rich chocolaty notes and there are notes of of dark slightly raisined fruit under the more fresh sort of red cherry and fresh red plum notes as you get to the back palette there you’re starting to see more sort of ripe concentrated licorish notes there’s a slightly bitter grip slightly mouthwatering actually because the just the fine tannins and the acidity are playing against each other quite nicely there so yes going from that sort of fresher red fruit in the in the earlier in the palette to a back palette that is dark red to Black Plum and heading on into sort of more concentrated almost bitter licorish note at the Finish there’s a structured note on the finish the freshness is keeping the Finish quite Lively there’s quite a polished black fruit there but it is quite dense quite impenetrable and that’s where the sort of the bitter licorice notes are coming in in again so there are hints of sort of anise towards the Finish there and I guess the freshness is just bringing out notes of ripe black cherry again throughout the entire of this there’s very clearly a certain amount of Cedar tannin in there but there aren’t for wood notes of vanilla or Cedar the fruit is very well integrated with the with the oak there so the oak is manifesting itself in terms of the structure on the finish this has a long finish this is this has young fresh fruit its structure is quite firm without being as stringent it’s a wine whose structure and whose good acidity makes me think that this is you know very happily a wine that will age for 10 years and probably a lot longer I mean it’s got such lovely freshness and acidity really does give stability to wines as they as they age and that combined with the the long structure I should imagine this is a wine for at least 15 years aging if you want to and yet at the same time the freshness of the red fruit does give a certain amount of approachability to the wine even though there is this sort of slightly Dusty drying grip on the on the mid to back palette so yes actually really quite a sophisticated wine with with excellent structure lovely balanced very well handled Oak I mean I I find it hard to believe this has spent 48 months in Oak because it’s really quite toned back I mean I know only 30% of it was new but I would expected the the oat notes to be more to the four in this case and I think that’s a testament to the quality of the fruit so yes the wine isn’t cheap do follow the link I’ll put in the notes below to the wine Searcher web page which will show you where the Wine’s available and at what price but undeniably a very well-made high quality wine from the berda region of Sania so thank you very much for watching our tasting it’s fantastic to have you join us if you want to watch more regularly it would be a great idea to subscribe to follow the channel if you’ve enjoyed the video do please press the like button do leave any comments you have in the comments box below if you have any friends you think might be interested do please 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