JNK

Viticulture and winemaking at the Mervič cellar began in 1890, when Ivan Mervič, informally called JNK, bought the first piece of land to plant vines. The old folks say he singlehandedly cultivated the earth for his vineyard and strengthened the terraces with stones and walls and planted approximately 200 vines. Around 1910 his son Peter took over the viniculture and winemaking business and slightly increased the surface area of the vineyards. Despite the hard conditions that followed the Second World War he managed to renew some of the vineyards by digging about 1.20 m deep with the help of his son Oskar. They planted mostly the vitovska grganja, rebula, kraljevina and malvasia vines. In the seventies the production was shortly stopped and then continued  in 1977. The rich tradition and love for the vineyards passed on to the sons Andrej and Boleslav. The latter afterwards continued with viticulture and winemaking to the present day. In the last few years he increased the surface to today’s 3.5 ha.

In memory of its originator the cellar bears the name JNK.

At the Mervič – JNK cellar we cultivate 3.5 hectares of vineyards, which grow on a marlaceous soil at a height of 100 to 300 meters above the sea level. The vineyards are located on a 30-45% inclined ground which gives us very good results extracting wine, it’s aroma and acidity. Because of the special marlaceous soil (opoka) the wines contain lots of minerals. We produce mostly white wine sorts – rebula, chardonnay, green sauvignon (jakot.e), white pinot, some malvasia and sauvignon. Of the red sorts we produce cabernet sauvignon and merlot. We are included in the system of integrated production of grape and wine at the authorized organisation in Slovenia. Because of such production we have a smaller harvest per vine (approx 1.5 to 2 kg with the white sorts and 2kg with the red sorts).

The grapes at the harvesting are carefully selected. First we separate the grapes , then follows the maceration (the fermentation of the wine on the berry mass). The maceration of the white grapes takes usually 3-5 days, sometimes up to 8, while the red grapes macerates about 30-40 days. The wine matures in wooden oak barrels, where it lays for 1-2 years. They maturate on their own wine lees, which have to be healthy at the harvest so we can decide to use them. With this type of production we want to gain wine suitable for ageing, which means that we start selling our bottled wine after 3-4 years or more. During this time the wine lies in the bottles at least one year after it’s been bottled.

Our philosophy of producing wine is tto grow quality grapes, which is necessary for producing top-level quality wines of protected geographical origin.