What can you write about your own wine? It much easier to write about ones made by other people….!

Roka is our own winemaking project and 2013 was the debut vintage for our Blaufrankisch – or Modra Frankinja as it is known in Slovenia. The wine comes from a single half-hectare east facing vineyard in Kog, in the Stajerska region of eastern Slovenia. Here the climate is Continental with the cooling influence of the Alps to the north. Blaufrankisch has one of the longest growing periods from flowering to harvest and it is not unusual to be harvesting here in mid-October. The vineyard aspect means the plants get the cooler morning sun, and not the late afternoon heat, and this allows for greater complexity to develop.

There is minimal intervention in the cellar. The bunches are de-stemmed and transferred manually into 500 litre open wood fermenters where fermentation starts spontaneously. Following fermentation, they are racked into old 500L slavonian oak casks for a year where they mature. No sulphur is added and malolactic fermentation also takes place spontaneously.

The objective is to produce an elegant wine that emphasises the classic savoury, silky, red-fruit character of Blaufrankisch.

“Wines of The Year” - Irish Times for Roka Blaufränkisch