Ronco Blanchis

In the tiny rural village of Mossa, near Gorizia in Italy’s Friuli-Venezia Giulia, a single hill rises on a particularly sun-exposed strip of land: the ronco (hillside) of Blanchis. These are lands with history — once belonging to the noble Austrian Catterini de Herzberg family and to a minister of the King of Spain — and today they belong to one of Collio’s most quietly accomplished white wine estates.

Collio sits at a crossroads of cultures, where Friulian tradition meets Mittel European influence, in a small DOC zone bordering Slovenia. Here, marl-and-clay ponca soils, the sheltering Giulian Alps, and the fragrance of the nearby Adriatic combine to give Collio’s whites their unmistakable character. Ronco Blanchis, working under winemaker Gianni Menotti, is one of the region’s most knowledgeable interpreters of that terroir — a family-run, small-production estate devoted entirely to the pursuit of precise, age-worthy white wine.

The approach in the cellar is calm and exacting: mostly stainless steel fermentation to preserve varietal purity and the mineral imprint of the ponca soils, with selective use of barrique for richer, Chardonnay-based selections. From four core white varieties — Friulano, Pinot Grigio, Sauvignon, and the estate’s signature Collio Bianco blend, playfully labeled Blanc de Blanchis — Ronco Blanchis crafts wines of bright aromatics, savory minerality, and real aging potential. The Friulano, often touched by natural botrytis in favorable years, is considered by many the estate’s finest expression.