My objective is to produce “Living Wine”, which changes and evolves with time, year after year, depending on what nature provides us with. To do so, I try to extract as many territorial characteristics as possible, while respecting the particularities of the vine. In order to achieve this, the grape peels remain in maceration for a period that varies between a few hours to a few days. Depending on the duration of this procedure I may leave the grape clusters intact or destem them. However, if the grapes are destemmed the fermentation process usually starts with autochthonous yeasts.

Criomaceration, below 12 degrees Celsius is used to exalt the elegance of certain wines, merely by making use of the cooling pockets on the stainless-steel tanks. In other wines I use maceration during fermentation, at about 18 degrees Celsius, to extract sharper tannins. I am currently being helped by the enologists Erika Barbieri and Alberto Faggiani, who started working with me from the very beginning and who are providing guidance and professional advice. Year by year, together we decide on the best technique to adopt in order to achieve our final result.

In economics, the price of a good varies depending on the buyer’s perception of the beauty, taste and uniqueness of the product. It is for this reason that I have decided to vary the price of my wine  each year depending on its quality and durability, exactly as the price of the grapes varies each year depending on natural factors, which affect the demand.

More precisely, each type of wine will have a minimum and maximum price range, however, its exact price will only be decided once the wine is ready to be sold, only after it has been adequately matured.

Since we seriously believe in ecological sustainability, from the start, the Marcuzzi winery began to produce organic wine, excluding all synthetic chemical products and opted to use just a minimum amount of copper, sulfur and seaweed, to prevent damage and diseases which may affect the plants.

Photovoltaic panels have been installed on the roof of the winery as support to the heating pump, therefore only electric power and a wood fire are used for heating during winter. In addition, the new winery guarantees high thermic efficiency thanks to the insulation of the inside and outside walls, as well as due to the latest concept of doubleglazing window and door fixtures.

As the winery is situated on the top of a hill, we have tried to make the most of the natural insulation for the lower floor. Furthermore, we have tried to make use of the incline of the hill for the unloading of the grapes (which takes place strictly by hand), enormously reducing the use of pumps.

A modern sludge depuration system purifies black and grey water in order to reuse it in the vineyard. There is furthermore a separate area for the purification of residues from the phytosanitary treatment of the nebulizer.

The winery is located on a small hill of about 5 hectars in San Floriano del Collio. This hill is called “Çujevi” in Slovenian, which means stump. The Slovenian border to the North can be identified thanks to the milestones and two old military road signs, a yellow one and a red one, which are  150 meters  and 50 metres from the border itself.

The hillsides overlook the vineyards which descend in terraces and the old “ritocchino” vineyard.

The vines we cultivate are Tocai Friulano, Istrian Malvasia and White Pinot on the east slope, Grey Pinot on the south-east slope; Cabernet Franc, Ribolla Gialla and Sauvignon blanc on the south-west and west slopes.

Our label wants to portray the different vine parcels unified by the wine vine as well as the slopes of the hill in relief. The red dotted line indicates the borderline which is certainly of great historic importance, but is, in fact, merely an artificial boundary of our Collio/Brda, which has always been linked, geologically, environmentally and morphologically.

A small part of the Çujevi hill was sold, to a peasant family whose surname was Bizaj, before the First World War. They built their house on the top of the hill. The fields all around had been inherited by various noble families of the “Gorizia and Gradisca county”, mostly Austrians from the Habsburg dynasty, from the Herbesteins, to the Della Torres, to the Attems. The last owners were the Teuffenbachs, whose mansion was located in the nearby village of Vipolze. Two mansions can   actually be seen today from our winery; the more recent, where the Teuffenbachs lived, has now been transformed into a 12-room hotel, while the ancient one, which the nobles used as a hunting ground, now hosts a restaurant and the Slovenian cultural museum. Back in time, the grapes from the sharecropping were brought to the nobleman’s personal winery by ox cart, to Piuma, for the winemaking process (this winery has also been transformed into a 3-room hotel called Villa Schloss-Teuffenbach).

The vineyards, in fact, were cultivated until the Second World War, by peasants on a sharecropping contract, who had to share the harvest equally with their landlord.

From 1918 to 1927, the surroundings where almost uninhabited, and farmers were summoned from nearby villages. In particular, our area, Giasbana, was assigned to three families that lived in Villa Jazbine (“stone land” in Slovenian) from 1927, which included the Skoks (owners of the Villa, with its winery), the Buzzinellis (future owners of Çujevi hill) and the Coljas, who then emigrated. Unfortunately, during the 1930’s, the Bizaj paterfamilias, owner of Çujevi, died in the collapse of one of the three military bunkers which had been built during First World War, near the house. As a consequence his wife had to bring up her children on her own. After the Second World War and after the partition of the state borders, the nobleman decided to sell his properties, however, he gave his peasants the right to buy the land. That is how Buzzinelli Ignazio first bought the eastern part of the hill and then the remaining parts, with the house of the Bizajs. He was, however, not able to buy a small plot in the north east that a Slovenian family, called the Stekars, didn’t want to sell.

The hill was then inherited by the son Mariano Buzzinelli in 1988, and by his son Marino in 1995.

It was in 2016 that the Marcuzzis bought the entire property, including the small plot of land from the Stekars. Therefore since 2019 the Marcuzzis have been making wine in the new winery with its   winetasting room attached.

The future will become history in its turn…