 Hello, hello, hello, welcome back to Exotic Wine Travel. I am your host, Matthew Horky. Today we are going to talk about Slovenian wine, especially wine from the eastern part of Slovenia. You know, we spent a great deal of our time in Central and Eastern Europe and taste lots of Slovenian wines. We go there every single year to taste, visit with producers, kind of keep up with the vintages. You have to understand that most people don't know where Slovenia actually is. And when people ask me, where is Slovenia? I ask them, do you know where Italy is? Well, oh yeah, okay. Well, it's on the northeastern border of Italy. You gotta understand as a country, Slovenia has about 21,000 hectares of vineyards. That means about 50,000 acres for those of you in the US. And regionally, the more famous producers are in western Slovenia, right on the border. They're wines that excite us quite a bit, especially those from Gariskeborda, the Pava Valley, Kras, which is also known as Carso in Italy. It's kind of an extension of the Carso region. And the northwestern corner of Slovenia, I'm sorry, of Istria. There's a little tip there with Slovenian Istria. For Slovenian wines regionally, they're making themselves more known for orange wines or amber wines, minimal or intervention or natural type of wines. You're gonna see lots of wines with skin contact there. They make some of the best wines on that style in the world, in my opinion. So that's what western Slovenia is mostly known for. But there's also exciting wines being made on the eastern part of the country, on the border with Austria, Hungary, and Croatia. So what you have to know on the eastern part of Slovenia, you're gonna see mostly fresh white wines. We found a number of good producers of Riesling, Pinot Noir, Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, and Fourment, or what they call it Shippun there. So I've got this producer here today that actually does those fresh styles, but also does macerated styles that you're gonna kind of see in western Slovenia, named Matic. First of all, I'm not tasting this on there, the Lapour single barrel, it's Chardonnay 2017. Spent two days on the skins, was really, really nice, etched in the barrel. I really felt like it tastes like some of the Varela wines from Movia. Movia is one of the more famous producers in Gorice Gaborda, Berda, and the western part of Slovenia. But I'm gonna taste this today. Another thing that you're gonna find in Slovenia is wines in clay vessels and fora. This is the Matic Get the Party Started, M for a Riesling, 2018. Okay, 214 days on the skins. Let's look at this color. This definitely looks like it's not fine, not filtered. It's super cloudy, there's even some particles in it. So people in the hipster bars in New York, people that like these kinds of wines are really gonna enjoy this. Is there wine? Yeah, there is. Is there wine? Who is that? Yeah. Yes. Oh, I'm coming. Okay. Oh, look at this. That is some wine, sir. Okay, we're gonna taste this together. Please, thank you. This is 214 days on the skin. Get in the frame, you're out of the frame here. Okay, let's smell this. Do you like it or not? Interesting. Reminds me of, there's Austrian orange wine, still very clean. There are some Sulfite's head, so it's not mousy, it's not funky. What kind of rum was you picking up on this? To be honest, I think it is a little bit mousy for me. A little bit. I don't pick up anything actually. For, you're gonna get a little bit of, for me I get some dried banana, dried mango, some fall leaves to note to anything else that you'd pick up. A little bit of cotton candy, cheesy note on the nose. Okay. I don't quite mind what I mentioned earlier, because on the palate it's actually really nice, vibrant. Good acidity. Actually, very good. Riesling sometimes, we believe, struggles as a macerated white wine. Got the high acidity, got the high acidity. It's not, it's not really necessarily fruity. It's still more of an earthy driven orange wine for me. What do you think? To me it's quite citrusy. Okay. Yeah, a little bit gingery as well. So this is the style you're gonna, this is the style that you're going to see in Slovenia. You're gonna get lots of these types. Okay. They're gonna get lots of these types of wines. I think they're, I think they can be some of the better examples in the world. So check it out. Good job, Montage, on this, especially the Lapour single barrel. I mean, I had this baby, I scored this baby 90 points. I thought it was very good, especially for the money. I'll have to taste through this a little more, see where I evaluated that. So check out Slovenian wines. They could be fantastic for those of you that know Slovenian wine. It's not all about Western Slovenia. There are some interesting producers in Shtajerska where this guy's from, which is basically Styrian extension of Austria-Styria. Check them out. I'll put some links to other Slovenian videos, articles we did in the description box. And guys, if you liked this video, please subscribe to our YouTube exotic wine travel. Click on the little bell so you get notifications when we make new videos. And I will see you for the next episode.