It was a rainy morning in the otherwise drought-stricken 2026 season. In the “lab” — in other words, the place where we take our coffee breaks — an email notification pops up. Sender: Bibenda. I open it, more out of curiosity than anything else — usually these are standard messages, newsletters, event invitations.
Not this time. Our Ribolla Gialla Orange, vintage 2024, had been awarded 5 Grappoli. The top score. That morning, the coffee was left half-drunk.
Then I remembered that it wasn’t a one-off: the 2022 vintage had already brought home the Oscar del Vino Bibenda 2025, and the 2023 vintage had also been awarded 5 Grappoli. Three vintages in a row, three awards, always for the same wine.
What are Bibenda Grappoli?
If you don’t follow wine guides, you may be wondering what “5 Grappoli” really means. The Bibenda guide is one of the most authoritative wine guides in Italy, and instead of stars or numerical scores it rates wines in grape bunches (grappoli), from a minimum of one to a maximum of five. The top rating, 5 Grappoli, is only given to wines that the tasting panel judges to be truly outstanding: not just technically flawless, but able to express the place they come from with precision.
The Oscar del Vino Bibenda is a different and even more selective award: each year it goes to a small number of wines, chosen from all those rated by the guide, as the highest expression of Italian winemaking in that vintage.
Why it matters to us
Ribolla Gialla Orange is made by macerating the juice on the skins, a practice that in Oslavia has never been a passing fashion but a tradition handed down through generations. It is a wine that demands patience, in the vineyard as in the cellar, and never takes the easy route. Seeing it recognised three years in a row, with two different kinds of award, tells us that this patience comes through in the glass too.
That said, an award is just an award: what really counts is what you find when you open the bottle. If you haven’t tried it yet, now seems like a good time.
Discover Ribolla Gialla Orange
Would you like to understand what fermenting with selected or indigenous yeasts means, and how it changes the character of a skin-macerated wine like this one? Read more…
