Josko Gravner

Josko Gravner is one of the world's most influential winemakers, having single-handedly created the global orange wine movement when he returned from a visit to Georgia in 2000 and abandoned conventional winemaking for extended skin-contact fermentation in traditional Georgian qvevri (terracotta amphora). Gravner's Ribolla Gialla undergoes 6-7 months of skin contact in qvevri, followed by years of aging in large Slavonian oak casks and extensive bottle aging before release. The wines are deeply coloured, profoundly complex, and uniquely unlike any other Italian white wine.

Josko Gravner's influence on global wine culture is impossible to overstate — his radical embrace of ancient Georgian winemaking techniques launched the worldwide orange wine movement and fundamentally changed how a generation of winemakers think about white wine production and terroir expression.