Mladen Rožanić is another first-generation winemaker in our portfolio. He is a Swiss entrepreneur with strong ties to his native Istria, Croatia, where his wine adventure started about 30 years ago, founding the Roxanich winery. Today, he runs the winery with his six daughters whose names decorate the labels of some of the wines.

This unconventional, artisan estate started as a passion project, that involved into a very serious winery. Located in the town of Motovun, in the middle of the lush Istrian Penninsula, the winery crafts rare, long aged, premium, natural wines, from Western part of Istria, just across the North Adriatic from Venice.

The Roxanich cellar is located inside the hill, away from the coast and spans over nearly 10,000 square feet. The state of art cellar is built in four levels and each floor is dedicated to a certain part of the winemaking process. Vinification and maceration, aging, and archiving, are all done on separate levels, with the tasting room as the pinnacle, where one can immerse calmly and deeply into the whole universe of the Roxanich wine experience.

The estate vineyards are in the villages of Bušura and Bačva. The Roxanich winery uses organic and biodynamic principles, as they see as the only way to true quality and healthy wine. Vineyards are farmed in the traditional manner, with minimal use of technology and by carefully controlled yields. The total vineyard area is a little under 70 acres, but the production is limited to about 70,000 bottles a year, depending on the vintage.

Rožanić describes his wines as honest, but big. He gives them as much time as they need to harmonize on their own. “Patience is a fantastic cellar technique”, he says. “Because wines need time to find each other.” This stubbornly counters the modern notion that pushes “young” wines to the market. The wines are processed with minimum intervention, without additives and as naturally as the vintage allows.