Bressan
The history of the Bressan family begins in 1726, when Giacomo Bressan started producing wines in Farra d'Isonzo — where the slopes of Collio end and the Isonzo river valley opens towards the Adriatic Sea, protected to the north by the Julian Alps. This is not a romantic origin story from a marketing book: it's a date, a surname, a piece of land that has belonged to the same family for three hundred years. From generation to generation, through two world wars and various dominations, up to Nereo Bressan — one of the founders of the Collio Consortium in the 1960s, the winemaker who kept the company going during the most difficult times — and then to his son Fulvio, the ninth generation, now at the helm with his wife Jelena and son Emanuele.
Fulvio is a figure who leaves no one indifferent. With a degree in psychology, followed by studies in Bordeaux and experiences in Burgundy, he then returned to Farra to do the only thing he wanted to do. The company left the Collio Consortium in 2000 — a divergence of ideas, he says, and one believes him. His wines do not claim appellations: they are released as IGT, because the rules of the consortiums do not interest him as much as the rules of the vineyard. He has demand four times his production and has no intention of growing beyond the current 20 hectares: "more than that, I would fall into industry."
The soil in Farra d'Isonzo is gravelly, iron-rich, well-drained — extraordinarily suited for red wines, unlike most of the white-wine-focused Collio. The vines are between 25 and 120 years old: the oldest Schioppettino survived phylloxera because it was surrounded by forest. The grape varieties are indigenous and international: Friulano, Ribolla Gialla, Malvasia, Verduzzo, Schioppettino, Pignolo, Pinot Noir, Moscato Rosa. In the vineyard, no synthetic chemicals, no herbicides, only manual labor, mass selection, no cloning. In the cellar: spontaneous fermentations with indigenous yeasts, prolonged macerations on the skins even for whites, long aging in local woods — cherry, chestnut, mulberry, acacia, Slavonian oak — and in bottle. The wines are neither clarified nor filtered. Labeling is done by hand, bottle by bottle.
Annual production varies: in difficult years, it can be almost zero. Fulvio does not make wine when the grapes are not what they should be. In the cellar, an average of five vintages are aged simultaneously, between barrels and bottles. The wines are released when they are ready, not when the market expects them. They are wines of strong character, sometimes austere, always recognizable — and "whether they are liked or not, Fulvio Bressan doesn't care much."
The history of the Bressan family begins in 1726, when Giacomo Bressan started producing wines in Farra d'Isonzo — where the slopes of Collio end and the Isonzo river valley opens towards the Adriatic Sea, protected to the north by the Julian Alps. This is not a romantic origin story from a marketing book: it's a date, a surname, a piece of land that has belonged to the same family for three hundred years. From generation to generation, through two world wars and various dominations, up to Nereo Bressan — one of the founders of the Collio Consortium in the 1960s, the winemaker who kept the company going during the most difficult times — and then to his son Fulvio, the ninth generation, now at the helm with his wife Jelena and son Emanuele.
Fulvio is a figure who leaves no one indifferent. With a degree in psychology, followed by studies in Bordeaux and experiences in Burgundy, he then returned to Farra to do the only thing he wanted to do. The company left the Collio Consortium in 2000 — a divergence of ideas, he says, and one believes him. His wines do not claim appellations: they are released as IGT, because the rules of the consortiums do not interest him as much as the rules of the vineyard. He has demand four times his production and has no intention of growing beyond the current 20 hectares: "more than that, I would fall into industry."
The soil in Farra d'Isonzo is gravelly, iron-rich, well-drained — extraordinarily suited for red wines, unlike most of the white-wine-focused Collio. The vines are between 25 and 120 years old: the oldest Schioppettino survived phylloxera because it was surrounded by forest. The grape varieties are indigenous and international: Friulano, Ribolla Gialla, Malvasia, Verduzzo, Schioppettino, Pignolo, Pinot Noir, Moscato Rosa. In the vineyard, no synthetic chemicals, no herbicides, only manual labor, mass selection, no cloning. In the cellar: spontaneous fermentations with indigenous yeasts, prolonged macerations on the skins even for whites, long aging in local woods — cherry, chestnut, mulberry, acacia, Slavonian oak — and in bottle. The wines are neither clarified nor filtered. Labeling is done by hand, bottle by bottle.
Annual production varies: in difficult years, it can be almost zero. Fulvio does not make wine when the grapes are not what they should be. In the cellar, an average of five vintages are aged simultaneously, between barrels and bottles. The wines are released when they are ready, not when the market expects them. They are wines of strong character, sometimes austere, always recognizable — and "whether they are liked or not, Fulvio Bressan doesn't care much."
