Aci Urbajs

Aci Urbajs calls himself an organic anarchist, and his farm looks the part. It sits high in the hills above the hamlet of Rifnik, near Šentjur and east of Celje in Slovenian Styria: an isolated wooden cottage and, in the words of the writer Simon J Woolf after a visit in 2020, "an impossibly steep amphitheatre" of old vines. Wine has been made around this hill for a very long time, and an open-air archaeological park lies close to the farm.

The turning point was biodynamics. A UK merchant says he began working biodynamically in 1998, and Woolf has him Demeter certified since 1999. In an RTV Slovenija feature on natural wine, Primož Štajer starts his list of Styria's natural growers with "the first Demeter winemaker, Aci Urbajs".

The vineyards are tiny and hard to work. An older profile of the farm puts them at 0.7 hectares on very steep sites at Dramlje and Rifnik, while the UK merchant says about one hectare. That profile describes no chemical sprays or herbicides and grass left to grow between the rows. The grapes named across sources are Chardonnay, Kerner, Sivi Pinot (Pinot Gris) and rizling, with Modri Pinot (Pinot Noir) as well.

Profiles of the farm describe wines fermented and aged in oak, and the 2013 white blend, at least, went into bottle unfined, unfiltered and with no sulphur added. The farm's specialities have included late-harvest and ice wines. The range now goes out under the Organic Anarchy name, from the white blend to Sivi Pinot and the Radicall bottlings. The farm also publishes a book, "Brez naslova - Med Zemljo in soncem" ("Without a title - Between the Earth and the Sun"), with Tina Urbajs as its contact.