Carso-Kras: The windswept plateau home to one of Italy's most unique wine regions

The windswept limestone plateau of Carso, overlooking the Bay of Trieste, is home to Friuli-Venezia Giulia’s smallest functioning DOC.

Carso-Kras, or simply Carso, has a mere 57 hectares of vines officially registered to the denomination, with production in 2025 of 199,000 bottles.

Yet these figures do not tell the whole story: only a small number of wineries in the area claim the DOC as most bottle their wines under the regional Venezia Giulia IGT.

Properties in Carso are small. Castelvecchio, the only relatively large estate, has 36 hectares, while Edi Kante has 17.

None of the other 21 members of the local growers’ association works with more than 10 hectares, and several have fewer than five.

Wines shaped by rock

Carso is an area of extreme viticulture, with native varieties strongly associated with the region.

It is also a border region, closely connected to neighbouring Slovenia through culture and language.

Place names sound Italian, but family names are Slovene, and Slovene is the language most often spoken at home.

The environment puts strict limits on what can be cultivated in Carso. With bare rock often at the surface, little besides olive trees and vines can survive.

Luca Tomasig of the Castelvecchio estate recounts that it can take more than a month to break up the stone and prepare one hectare for a new vineyard. Consequently, vines are planted in small plots wherever soil can be found.

The deep underground streams typical of limestone karst do little for the surface. Thin soils retain little water, so drought is a constant threat.

These challenges, however, come with a silver lining. Doline – sinkholes where deep banks of red ferrous soil accumulate – provide soil that can be scooped up and used to prepare ground for cultivation.

And extraordinary underground cellars, such as those of Skerk and Zidarich, are carved into the rock to depths of up to 25 metres.

Two prominent features shape Carso’s climate: the nearby sea, which moderates summer temperatures, and the almost constant winds, which bring clear skies and high solar radiation.

These conditions also mean fungal disease is almost entirely absent. ‘I wouldn’t know what downy mildew looks like,’ producer Martin Merlak told me.

Together, Carso’s soil and climate produce naturally low yields of healthy, ripe grapes.

The resulting wines are vibrant, with low to medium alcohol, tense acidity and a distinctive mineral character.

The grapes of Carso

Chardonnay and Sauvignon were introduced to the area in the 1970s, when Friuli-Venezia Giulia’s wine industry was undergoing modernisation.

Although these varieties can make wines of great personality – Edi Kante, for instance, makes an outstanding Chardonnay – they have a marginal presence.

The grapes that define Carso are Malvasia Istriana, the native white Vitovska, and the red Terrano.

A skin contact tradition

Wine-growing on the karst plateau has a long history. Pliny the Elder wrote of a wine called Pucinum from the northern Adriatic and associated it with Livia, the wife of Emperor Augustus.

In the 20th century, the region was devastated during WWI, but recovered enough for the Istituto Centrale di Statistica to estimate 1,606 hectares of specialised vineyards in 1938.

Production, however, declined again WWII, and recovery only really began in the 1980s. The Carso DOC was approved in 1985.

Traditionally, as in neighbouring Slovenia, all white grapes were crushed together and fermented with their skins.

When I asked Benjamin Zidarich when he had started macerating his white wines, he looked surprised and replied that he had always done it that way.

Edi Kante was the first to depart from tradition, making single-variety white wines using conventional modern vinification. Today, the two styles exist side by side.

Alongside Kante, the excellent Castelvecchio ferments white grapes without their skins.

Almost all the small artisan producers, however – including leading names such as Kocjancic, Lupinc, Merlak, Milic, Skerk, Skerlj and Zidarich – macerate their wines for varying lengths of time.

Skerk, Skerlj and Zidarich favour an extracted style with long skin contact, while others, such as Martin Merlak, macerate for shorter periods to preserve varietal freshness.

‘It might be macerated, but it still needs to taste like a white wine,’ Merlak argues. When handled sensitively, both styles work in Carso.

Although a handful of the most representative producers export small quantities, the best way to get hold of a few bottles is to visit this remarkable region – something I highly recommend.

Below is my selection of wines from Carso to look out for.

Wines from the Carso plateau

Wines are grouped by grape variety

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