Radikon stands alone: no one does it like this Friulian superstar. As Eric Asimov put it, these wines "astound for their purity, their distinctiveness and their almost radical evocation of a pre-modern age." The Merlot comes from old plantings on the family's Oslavia estate and gets the same patient treatment as the whites: extended skin contact (a given for a red, but here taken much further), then long aging in large neutral Slavonian oak. The vines grow on clay, marl, and limestone right by the Slovenian border, on slopes originally planted by Stanko's grandfather and farmed without synthetics since 1995. Since Stanko's passing in 2016, his son Sasa, wife Suzana, and daughter Ivana have continued the work, making the wine the way it has always been made. The 500ml is the perfect format for one. An orange-wine-adjacent red unlike any other Merlot you've tasted.