 Welcome back to Exotic Wine Travel. I am your host, Matthew Horky. I have to ap- well first of all we're gonna be tasting some Slovak wines in this episode from very small producers. I have to apologize first because of the lighting and kind of our surroundings. Shireen and I have been on a crazy last three weeks. I don't know how I would put that last three weeks. When do we tasting trips, press trips in Sardinia, Hungary and also Slovakia? Moving every single day it's been a crazy schedule and ahead the next three weeks is gonna be crazy because we're also doing press trips in Hungary, again Slovenia and Portugal and Italy. Shoot! So the last next two months is going to be crazy. So let's get into some of the wines here today. You know we did a 10-day retour of the wine regions of Slovakia and we went there for the first time last year. It actually was really impressed with what they're doing there and this time it just opened our eyes. We met more producers. We tasted more wines. We had a wonderful time and I'm gonna share some of those wines with you today. Slovakia you gotta think you know they say that there's about 15,000 hectares of vineyards in Slovakia. Producers say it's more like 8,000. They've adopted more kind of the Austrian style in terms of appellations in how to label wine so there's lots of information on the label but these three producers are tiny. You really gotta know who they are or be in the area to get them but I thought I'd share some of my wines with you. I have to award you before I get started I have tasted all three of these wines before at the producer's place so let's see how they shape up today. Let's get started shall we? The first one we have is a producer called Korbash, a tiny producer. We spent an afternoon with him. He's an ex-MLEA that wanted to learn about wine and he started learning about wine. He eventually went to school in Marava for wine making schools and now he's buying grapes making his own wine. This is his Tramen, Chirveny or Red Traminer also known as Gevetschriminer from 2015. This actually won a gold medal at a local competition and we're quite impressed with this. You know Traminer is a variety that does suffer does not get that great of acidity so you know it's flowery it's nice but sometimes I'm just craving and wanting more acid so oh I see so long I see a wine in there I gotta get that out of the frame. Let's give this a go nice golden color. The Traminer actually what I was gonna say in Slovakia has more acidity as do most wines because it's in the northern most limits of where grape growing is possible latitude-wise. Let's give this a go. We sure and I like this wine when we tasted the winery and I gotta say it's impressing me today. He buys all his grapes Yaro Korbash but does a pretty darn good job makes up an excellent Pinot Blanc. We spent the afternoon with him. He met his wife who was actually Filipina. They met at a crew while we were working cruise ships in America. I thought that was really cool to have a beautiful small really humble seller and I think that he's gonna be very very very good in the future. For me you get the typical lychee sweet peach notes a little bit of a yellow flower you guys see here it's a really golden color really golden color. Let's give this a go. This is pretty good. I mean really good. Shereen is the one that was really impressed with this the first time we taste it. It's got mineral notes like I said it's got all the trauma flavors a lot of floral a lot of citrus a lot of sweet peach notes but it's got acidity and it's got a touch of aging notes to make the pal a little bit rounder. I am actually I'm liking this a lot more than when I had it at the winery. I'm gonna go 3.9 out of 5. I think it's pretty darn good wine. Wow pretty good stuff. This in this Pinot Blanc I think are his best wines. I will put the Pinot Blanc up on the screen. I think it's also an excellent wine. Shereen's in the back somewhere so I'm gonna have to force feed this down her throat after I'm done filming the show. Let's move on shall we. We're gonna taste the Lucas Krasnowski. I'm saying that right. Dornfelder from 2016 those you know it's a German cross. Dornfelder is prized actually because it gets deep color which in the past German wines did not actually also known for making really simple simple red wines. I'm gonna give this a little bit of a rinse after the traminer. Lucas Krasnowski and his wife Martina beautiful family. They also have a kid named Simon and since it was out in the middle of nowhere we actually had to stay the night with them and they showed us all around their village. They took us actually to the wine museum which was wine museum in their town which is really cool. They took us to a few other small producers. They took us Lucas also is a vineyard owner. He works in the vineyards for a bigger company. We stopped there and then we tasted some of his wines. He only makes about 5,000 bottles a year from his own vineyards. Wonderful family. His wife Martina cooked a wild boar for us which was delicious. Really sweet people young on fire enthusiastic and the wines are clean well-made. Let's get going on this wine. I was really really surprised to see a Don Felder in Slovakia but you do see it in the Malo Karpatska or the small Carpathian region and when I tasted this wine at first I was actually very impressed with it because it was just a good example of Don Felder and it does smell like that. I get a little bit of blackberry wild berry like wild berry pie a little bit of chocolate. If you had Don Felder before it's not super complex but it's just it's just dark like dark berry pie real fun to drink. Let's give this a go. Silky mom feel a little bit of pepper just a non-pretentious easy to drink red wine that you're not gonna get upset about. I'm 3.8 out of 5 on this. I think I was the same score the first time. I think it's pretty darn good red wine not blowing my face off delicious. I really like what he's doing with some Reese'slings. He's making a sweet Reese'sling. He's also making an Alliberney Georgian style with no sulfites. He actually bought a few Georgian Quaveries. Real interesting guy. All his wines are clean well made and he's only 26-27 so he doesn't know where to go but up already making some delicious juice. Let's move on shall we. One of his friends he brought us to Ruznak Grineva. This is the Kuve of Alliberney and Sfato which is actually Saint Lauren. This is the 2016 this was actually so funny. Very small producer I think making a couple thousand bottles. He actually just took this up took the barrel sample put it right in the bottle because he just bottles as needed. Very simple humble guy. I didn't I wasn't a big fan of the white. The barrel fermented whites but his reds were pretty darn good. He actually got a gold medal I think at AWC for one of his Alliberneys. For those you don't know Alliberney is a cross between Cabernet Sauvignon and Alicante Boucher so it gives some leafy capsicum notes from the Cabernet with super dark color. Ensuring like this I have to say this is pretty good. I mean it's got a lot of capsicum leafiness. Wild berry, pepper. Quite complex. Let's give this a little bit of a taste. Fans of Italian minds go love this juiciness. The Saint Lord gives it some juiciness. There is some rusticity in it but the Alliberney actually has complexity. If you get a chance to get a chance to taste it. Very very interesting grape. Wild blackberry, capsicum leafy notes. I gotta give sure an credit for this. This is pretty decent. I got some texture to it. Some chewy tannins. I'm gonna say 3.8 out of 5. Like 3.8 out of 5. Yeah sounds good. Not blowing my face off but really nice red wine. Juicy complexity especially for a small producer. I think it's worth checking out. So you know the Slovak wine industry is pretty much dominated by a few big producers but there are a lot of small producers making some interesting stuff as we've seen here. Like we came across tons of gems on our trip and we'll be putting more articles and videos on our website in the coming weeks. So guys if you like this video please subscribe to our YouTube channel, Exotic Wine Travel. I will see you at the next episode.