I believe in wines that need more time and are able to develop nice secondary and tertiary aromas. There have been big changes towards modernity in. Istria in all aspect, but you have to try to understand the grapes, the terroirs and the consume, and to find the truth. I want to discover the character of this land. This is the philosophy of Dimitri Brečević, the iconic name of natural wines production in Croatia; born in French Basque Country, from a Frenchwoman and an Istrian father, in the foothills of the Pyrenees. Dimitri studied oenology in France and then worked at Domaine de Chevalier in addition to working harvests in Australia, New Zealand, Bordeaux, and Burgundy. In 2004 he decided to invest himself in his father’s homeland of Istria near the town of Buzet – formerly known as Piquentum in the time of the Ancient Romans.
Istria is a region of truffles, olive oil, seafood and a viticultural history spanning thousands of years, Piquentum is the project of Dimitri, one of only a few winemakers in Croatia who are content to neither add nor remove anything from the wine, to allow it to express its origins. Piquentum offers the typical aroma of Istrian Malvasia, Teran, Refošk , but in a completely sincere way.
Dimitri Brečević practices a natural winemaking approach. All grapes are picked by hand and pressed into concrete tanks with no temperature control. All of Piquentum wines complete a wild ferment with no use of added yeast or any additives whatsoever, and are bottled unfiltered with minimal sulfur. The black dots on the nice labels map the annual rainfall in the region over the year the wine was made.
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