Italy · Collio & Brda Hills (Gorizia)

Sturm

Family estate in Collio, Friuli Venezia Giulia, making organically farmed, skin-macerated Pinot Grigio with pale copper-pink colour. Denis and Patrick Sturm run the estate.

The producer

Sturm makes Pinot Grigio that is copper-pink rather than straw white, and the colour is not a stylistic gesture. It is what happens when the grape spends time on its skins before pressing. Most Collio producers strip that pigment away. Sturm keeps it, and the wine arrives with more weight, more texture, and a fuller aromatic register than the category norm suggests. The estate sits in Collio, a hilly DOC zone in Friuli Venezia Giulia that traces the Slovenian border, where sandy Eocene marl soils and long, thermally varied growing seasons give white wines their lift and definition.

Oscar Sturm shaped the modern winery and then stepped back, leaving technical decisions to his son Patrick and vineyard and office work to his son Denis. The two brothers lead the estate together. For the Pinot Grigio Bio, their method begins with cold skin maceration in a Ganimede system, continues with wild yeast fermentation on the free-run juice, and finishes with a split elevage between stainless steel and 500-litre tonneaux followed by several months on the lees. The wine is certified organic, runs at 14 percent alcohol, and opens with peach, apricot, wisteria and white flowers before a savoury, crisp finish.

Known for

Organic, skin-macerated Pinot Grigio from Eocene marl soils in Collio.

Notable facts

The story

The Storm on the Label

Sturm means storm in German, and the estate prints wind and waves on its black label. The family arrived in this corner of Friuli from Andritz in Austria in the nineteenth century, and the Germanic name held even as the land around them became Collio DOC and the farming became Italian. When the Sturm family made a skin-macerated, organically certified Pinot Grigio, they kept the storm on the label. The mark had travelled from one country and one language into another, and it now appears on a pale copper-pink bottle that sits between white wine and rose, between Austrian heritage and Friulian viticulture: a family name from one side of the Alps printed on a wine made on the other.

From the atlas

Sturm

At A Glance

The Producer

Sturm makes Pinot Grigio that is copper-pink rather than straw white, and the colour is not cosmetic. It is what happens when the grape spends time on its skins before pressing. Most Collio producers strip the pigment away and deliver a pale, light white. Sturm keeps it, and the wine lands with more weight, more texture, and a fuller aromatic register than the category norm suggests.

The estate sits in Collio, a hilly DOC zone in Friuli Venezia Giulia that traces the Slovenian border. The family has been in this corner of Friuli since the nineteenth century, arriving originally from Andritz in Austria. Oscar Sturm shaped the modern winery and then stepped back, leaving technical decisions to his son Patrick and vineyard and office work to his son Denis. The two brothers now lead the estate together.

Place

Collio is a strip of hills in the far northeast of Italy, close enough to Slovenia that the appellation runs along the border. The altitude, the morning fog that rolls in from the Isonzo plain, and the afternoon warmth from the Adriatic combine to give grapes a long growing season with marked day-to-night temperature swings. That thermal range preserves acidity and aromatic lift in white grapes, which is why Collio whites tend to carry more freshness and more aromatic definition than whites from the flat Friuli plains to the south.

The appellation covers a range of white varieties, but Pinot Grigio has become its most visible export. Most of that wine is vinified as a clean, pale white with immediate fruit. Sturm's decision to use skin maceration places its Pinot Grigio at a different point in the Collio range: more textured, more savoury, closer to what the grape delivers when fermentation is not designed to strip it back.

Soil And Site

The Sturm vineyards grow on sandy Eocene marl, a compressed sedimentary soil of marine origin that breaks down into a mix of sand and clay. The sandy fraction drains quickly and keeps vine roots exploring downward for water; the clay fraction retains enough moisture to protect against drought stress. Eocene marl is found throughout Collio and is widely considered well-suited to white wine viticulture: it produces grapes with moderate alcohol potential, firm acidity, and good aromatic complexity. The organic farming on these soils aims at preserving the soil rather than pushing yield.

Story

Oscar Sturm built the winery and ran it through the years when Friuli's white wines were establishing an international reputation. Collio producers were earning attention for aromatic whites vinified clean, and Oscar farmed his Eocene marl parcels through that period. When he stepped back, he did so deliberately: the sources describe him as keeping a low profile and leaving the technical field to his sons. Patrick moved into the cellar decisions; Denis took the vineyards and the office. The handover was not a slow drift but a chosen division.

The estate's organic certification for the Pinot Grigio Bio and the commitment to skin maceration represent the direction Denis and Patrick have taken the wine. Rather than making Collio Pinot Grigio in the conventional mould, they built their lead wine around a method that produces a different colour and a different palate weight. That choice is also a market positioning: the pale pink of the œil de perdrix sits visually apart from every other white on the shelf.

Vineyards And Cellar

Farming on the Eocene marl parcels is certified organic for the Pinot Grigio Bio. Sustainable methods are used across the estate to protect soil health and improve grape quality. The grapes are harvested by hand and brought to the cellar without oxidative damage.

For the Pinot Grigio Bio, the winemaking begins with cold skin maceration using the Ganimede system. The Ganimede fermenter uses the carbon dioxide produced during fermentation to punch the cap of grape solids up through the liquid rather than punching it down mechanically, which circulates the must gently and extracts colour and tannin from the skins without aggressive contact. Cold maceration slows extraction and keeps the aromatic compounds intact. After maceration, the grapes are soft-pressed and only the free-run juice proceeds to fermentation. Wild yeasts from the vineyard carry the fermentation rather than cultured laboratory strains, which extends the timeline and introduces more complexity to the aromatic base.

After fermentation, élevage is split: part of the wine goes into stainless steel tanks, part into 500-litre tonneaux. The tonneaux are large enough that the ratio of wood surface to wine volume is low, so oak character is restrained and integration comes from the lees contact rather than barrel flavour. After several months on the lees, the wine is bottled. Across the broader range, Sturm uses stainless steel and French oak for each wine, though the production detail for each cuvée beyond the Pinot Grigio Bio is not fully documented in available sources.

Wines

Pinot Grigio is the lead variety and the wine with the most fully documented production method. The Pinot Grigio Bio is 100 percent Pinot Grigio, certified organic, and vinified through the cold maceration, wild yeast, and split-élevage process described above. At 14 percent alcohol, it is fuller than most Collio whites sold under the Pinot Grigio name. The skin contact pulls copper-pink pigment from the grape's dark skin into the juice, producing the pale œil de perdrix colour that signals the wine's weight before the glass reaches the nose.

The broader Sturm range includes other varieties vinified with a combination of stainless steel and French oak depending on the wine. White grape varieties suited to Collio's soil and climate form the core of this range. The split between tank-only and oak-influenced wines reflects the estate's approach: some wines are built for immediate aromatic expression, others for more weight and development on the lees.

In The Glass

The Pinot Grigio Bio opens with peach and apricot layered over wisteria and white flowers. The aromatic register is generous and lifted, more so than the typical Collio white, because the skin maceration has pulled more of the grape's aromatic compounds into the juice during the cold soak. On the palate, fresh fruit gives way quickly to a savoury mid-palate with undergrowth and delicate floral notes threading through. The lees ageing adds a slight creaminess to the texture without pushing the wine toward heaviness. The finish is crisp, savoury and bright, with acidity that cuts through the fuller body the skin contact has built. The 14 percent alcohol is carried by that acidity and does not read as warm. The overall impression is of a white wine with the structural weight of a light skin-contact wine and the aromatic definition of a carefully made Friulian white.

A Bottle To Understand It

The Pinot Grigio Bio is the bottle to start with. It is 100 percent Pinot Grigio, certified organic, pale copper-pink from cold skin maceration, and fermented with wild yeasts on Eocene marl soils in Collio. It smells of peach, apricot and wisteria. In the mouth it is fuller than the label category prepares most drinkers for: the skin contact has given it body, the lees ageing has given it texture, and the acidity keeps both in check through a crisp, savoury finish. Buy it chilled but not cold, and give it ten minutes in the glass. It explains what skin maceration does to Pinot Grigio more directly than any tasting note can.

Anecdote

Sturm means storm in German, and the estate prints wind and waves on its black label. The family arrived in this corner of Friuli from Andritz in Austria in the nineteenth century, and the Germanic name held even as the land around them became Collio DOC and the farming became Italian. When the Sturm family made a skin-macerated, organically certified Pinot Grigio, they kept the storm on the label. The mark had travelled from one country and one language into another, and it now appears on a pale copper-pink bottle that sits between white wine and rosé, between Austrian heritage and Friulian viticulture, a family name from one side of the Alps printed on a wine made on the other.

Final Word

Sturm makes one of the clearest arguments in Collio for what Pinot Grigio can do when it is not stripped back to a pale white. The Pinot Grigio Bio is a direct, well-sourced wine with a production method that produces a measurably different result from the regional norm. Denis and Patrick Sturm run an estate their father built and have pushed it in a direction that rewards a buyer who wants more from the grape than its commodity version delivers.

Sources

Open Sturm in the interactive map →