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Touring the best wine bars in Trieste

While Trieste might be better known for its coffee culture, recent years have seen a boom in top quality wine bars. Jim Clarke assesses the Italian city's rapidly growing wine scene and picks out six places offering an eclectic mix of local, natural and international bottles

Words by Jim Clarke

Luca Formenti is co-owner of La Bottiglia Volante, a wine bar in Trieste championing natural wine

‘You have three distinctly different cultures, Slavic, Germanic and Italian, that all meet in Trieste,’ says Padja Kostic, owner of Pagna, a bakery and wine bar in the city. ‘And that’s why I think the city overshoots its size in many ways; it feels like a metropolis, even though it’s much smaller than that.’

Once an important port for the Hapsburgs and the Austro-Hungary Empire, Trieste became known for its musical and literary scene before World War I; James Joyce wrote many of his early works there. The city became part of Italy at the end of the war and is the capital of the Friuli-Venezia Giulia province. Long known for its coffee culture and classic cafés such as Antica Caffé San Marco, Trieste’s wine scene is increasingly reflecting the diversity of its past and its metropolitan character.

Carso wines; wines from elsewhere in the province, Italy or the rest of the world: all find their way to Trieste

Highly regarded vineyards are close at hand. The Carso DOC, known for its distinctive, stony limestone and red earth soils, wraps itself around the city. ‘We are 20 minutes from the city centre,’ says Noris Vesnaver, owner of Agriturismo Colja, in the Carso DOC; wineries like Colja, Kante, and Zidarich make easy visits for wine-loving visitors to the city.

Many of the city’s wine bars reach slightly further afield, highlighting wines from Friulian regions like Collio and Colli Orientali dei Friuli, both little over an hour’s drive north of the city. ‘So many wine industries talk about making diverse styles of wine,’ says Bobby Stucky MS, the owner of the Friulian restaurant Frasca in Colorado. ‘But Friuli actually delivers, with everything from amphora-aged orange wines to barrel-aged wines. to fresh, stainless-steel styles. And it wears it all very comfortably,’ he adds, with none of the aesthetic arguments common in other regions. Grape varieties, too, range from indigenous offerings like Ribolla Gialla, Vitovska, and Refosco to distinctive expressions of international grapes such as Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay and Merlot.

Caffe San Marco, a classic cafe turned wine bar in Trieste
Classic cafés like Antica Caffé San Marco are well established in Trieste but wine bars are now making a name for themselves in the city too

Carso wines; wines from elsewhere in the province, Italy or the rest of the world: all find their way to Trieste. ‘In Trieste, people used to drink a lot of table wines,’ Vesnaver says, ‘but in the last few years the scene is growing very fast.’ She says wine bars, sommeliers and wine tastings have become increasingly common in the city, largely attracting a young clientele. Restaurants like Puro and Nerodiseppia have built interesting cellars as well.

Kostic says that improvements in distribution have made this growth possible, with many young, small distributors bringing in wines from all over the world, including natural wines.

‘There are about five places in Trieste that serve natural wines,’ he says, ‘but until three, four years ago, there were none.’

Today, enjoying wine in Trieste can mean anything from small wine bars serving solely Friulian varieties to sprawling outdoor bistros modelled on the city’s grand, coffee-focused cafes. The city has long offered great food, drawing on a mix of Italian, Slavic, and Austrian traditions; now the wine scene has caught up.

Six of the best wine bars in Trieste

Trieste wine bars

Bollicine

Bollicine’s location at the top of the city’s grand canal makes it a relaxing place to while away an evening but add a substantial, seafood-focused menu and a great wine list and engagements elsewhere seem even less pressing. As the name suggests, sparkling wine leads the way, complemented by a strong set of Friulian wines. Owner Maurizio Procentese’s father opened Pizzeria Al Barattolo in 1981, one of Trieste’s first. Procentese completed his sommelier studies in 2004 and opened Bollicine next door to his father’s pizzeria three years later. The kitchen’s grilled branzino with a bottle of Castello Bonomi Franciacorta, or for a more indulgent evening, a 1996 Billecart-Salmon Clos St. Hilaire, pair well with both each other and the setting.

bollicinetrieste.it

 

La Bottiglia Volante

‘La Bottiglia Volante is very serious about natural wine,’ says Kostic, calling co-owner Luca Formenti ‘very knowledgeable’. The bar opened in 2021 and features over 200 natural wines from across Europe. Familiar names like Zidarich and Ganevat sit alongside more obscure offerings – Switzerland’s Henriot or Trentino Alto Adige’s Dornach, for example. As a centre for natural wine in Trieste, producers often make a point of hosting tastings at the bar; the shop’s Instagram account is a good guide to who’s in town.

instagram.com/labottigliavolante

 

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Gran Malabar

‘Wine bars are becoming more and more popular in Trieste,’ Vesnaver says,’ but Malabar was one of the first.’ Situated on a small, pleasant piazza, one could overlook Gran Malabar as just one of the city’s many comfortable, casual cafes until the chalkboard with the day’s wines catch your eye. Amongst a few dozen options, highly regarded Friulian producers like Radikon and Lis Neris are joined by a sprinkling of international wines both classic – Weinbach Gewurztraminer – and less usual – Israel’s Yarden, for example. As at most Italian cafes, table service prices are slightly more expensive than grabbing a quick glass at the bar.

instagram.com/gran_malabar

Pagna

Pedja Kostic made his way from Serbia to Trieste via Boston, where he learned the art of artisanal baking and developed an appreciation for natural wines. Home to what Kostic says is the only thermal oil oven in Italy, the bakery’s focus is long-fermentation bread, often incorporating indigenous grains, some of which they mill on site. ‘It felt natural to incorporate my passion for wine into the bakery,’ Kostic says, citing the vital role fermentation plays in both bread and wine. The coffee and bagel crowd turns its attention to focaccia and wine as the day progresses, with local restaurant workers relaxing at the tables outside with a glass and a sandwich or cheeseboard between shifts. The list is international, with 300 labels on average, of which up to a dozen might be offered by-the-glass on a given day. ‘I always joke that it’s the biggest natural wine list of any bakery in the world,’ Kostic adds.

instagram.com/pagna_panificioartigianale

 

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Piccola Vineria

Nestled down one of the bustling alleys in the busy neighborhood southwest of the grand Piazza Unitá d’Italia, the depth of Piccola Vineria’s selections belie its tiny space – order at the counter and take your wine into the alley, which is lined with tables. The bar calls itself a ‘Vineria e Champagneria’ and the list accordingly features mostly Friulian wines along with a healthy selection of Champagnes, including many grand marques. The charcuterie, cheese and large cicchetti – open-face sandwiches, really – are good and simple, keeping the focus firmly on what’s in the glass.

instagram.com/piccola_vineria

Al Ciketo

The namesake cicchetti – bruschetta, generously topped with a range of charcuterie, cheeses, tuna, or vegetables – fill the glass case that makes up the bar running down the narrow space here. One can make an enjoyable evening by working one’s way down the case a few cicchetti at a time, accompanying each round with a high-quality glass from the list of Friuli’s usual suspects – Friulano, Ribolla Gialla, Sauvignon and the rest. Got a big party? Grab a table outside and a bottle or three, and huge wooden trays of the cicchetti will carry you through the evening.

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