Milan on this wine: “Our wines have been gradually shifting towards less skin contact and more nuance – especially the White Labels, our “top shelf”, see shorter and shorter maceration times. That said, I still like to enjoy a (tamed) skin contact wine from time to time; and I understand that a lot of people are, on the contrary, suckers for this style, since hardly a week goes by without someone asking me for something orange. In short, skin contact wines still have their place in my heart and cellar, and creating an amber brother to our dear Běl & Nach liters was kind of a no-brainer.”
“These three salt-of-the-earth fellas all share not only the plump one-liter bottles that we’ve really fallen in love with, and linocut label by my dear wife Mirka, but also the same “everyday easy drinking” vibe. You know me, I’m still making wine mainly for myself, something I like to drink…”
The name Okr (ochre in Czech) follows the concise, color-themed concept of its siblings Běl and Nach, and honors eponymous natural pigment with a long history of use by humans, made from actual earth and offering the same hues as orange wines, from yellow to orange or amber.
Grapes: Gruner Veltliner, Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, Gewurztraminer, Pálava
Soil: Loess, clay, sand – blend of different vineyards in Bílovice and Moravský Žižkov, aged from 4 to 21 years. Estate-owned, organic.
Making of:
2023: The grapes are hand-picked, then undergo classic fermentation with 100% stems in, with only gentle pump-overs for 6 days. All this in order to get only a gentle extraction, to make this wine as palatable and drinkable as possible. Once free run juice is pressed, it spends about 6 months on lees in stainless steel tanks and then in wood, then it’s bottled unfined and unfiltered, with 3 mg/l of sulfur at bottling.
2022: The grapes are hand-picked, gently destemmed and then spontaneously fermented mostly as whole berries, without stomping and with only gentle pump-overs, 4 – 5 days depending on the variety. All this in order to get only a gentle extraction, to make this wine as palatable and drinkable as possible. Once pressed, it spends about 8 months on lees in stainless steel tanks and then in wood, then it’s bottled unfined and unfiltered, with cca 7ppm of sulfur at bottling.
Personality: easy-drinking as the winemaker wanted it! No hardcore tannins or long macerations, but rather a fine, “normal” skin contact wine with great energy, distinguished aromatics, and only a hint of the “orangey” character.
