We first met Jan Kozinc on a hot July morning. He greeted us with dusty hands and a quiet smile, having just finished a round of pruning. His father, Milan, waved from the tractor. His sister, Petra, was loading baskets of plums for schnapps. There’s no separation here between family and farm, work and rest. Everything folds into everything else—like the layered soils beneath their vines, rich with marl, clay, and limestone.
The Kozincs are a third-generation winemaking family, but nothing about their process feels inherited by obligation. It’s thoughtful, deliberate, and deeply personal. Their wines—like the wild Rebula fermented on skins, or the cloudy Pet-Nat that tastes like alpine apples—are quietly expressive, unfiltered in both method and message. You taste the family in them. The place. The season.
At lunch, we sat under a mulberry tree as Jan poured us a glass of their skin-contact Laški Rizling. “It’s a bit chaotic this year,” he laughed, “but the vineyard knows what it’s doing.” That humility—of working with nature, not against it—is at the heart of everything they do. No chemicals. No shortcuts. Just patient farming and instinctive winemaking.
It’s the slow clink of glasses, the cicadas humming in the background, the feeling that the best things in life are still made by hand.
We left with dusty boots, full hearts, and a few bottles tucked under our arms. Back in the city, their wine still tastes like that hillside. Still hums with bees.
