Collio & Goriška Brda

Border region where Italian and Slovenian wine cultures merge. The Collio hills produce Italy's finest white wines from indigenous grapes Romans would recognize.

What to do there

5 things to do

1. 1 Stand Where Rome's 9th City Fed Off These Hills — Aquileia Basilica Floor History · Price: low

   Before you taste a single grape, you need to understand what these hills meant to the ancient world.

   Where: Basilica di Santa Maria Assunta, Aquileia — 50 km southwest of Cormòns, 40 minutes by car. The Basilica is the UNESCO World Heritage heart of the ancient city. GPS: 45.7697, 13.3707. Address: Piazza Capitolo, 33051 Aquileia (UD). Admission ~€4.

   What: In the 4th century AD, when Rome's 9th greatest city was at its peak, someone commissioned the largest Paleo-Christian mosaic in the Western world to be laid under this church. It covers 760 square meters of floor. And scattered through it — grapes. Cherubs harvesting bunches. A woman selling grapes at market. Twelve lambs standing among grape clusters. Wine was so woven into the life and commerce of Aquileia that even the church floor spoke the language of the vine. This was Rome's commercial capital of the northern Adriatic. Population 100,000 in the 2nd century AD — a city the size of modern Cormòns multiplied by 60. The poet Ausonius, writing in the late 4th century, ranked world cities: Rome, Constantinople, Carthage, Antioch, Alexandria, Trier, Mediolanum, Capua — then Aquileia ninth. The Collio hills behind you supplied this city's wine for 600 years.

   How: Walk the elevated glass pathway over the mosaic floor. Find the grape harvest panels in the lower registers — they're easy to spot, look for the figure carrying a basket of fruit. Then step outside to the Roman forum ruins adjacent to the basilica. Look northeast toward the hills on the horizon. Those hills, 50 km away, are where you'll be drinking tonight.

   Backup: If arriving late, the exterior of the basilica and the Roman archaeological ruins around it are freely visible at all hours. The bell tower (Campanile) is often open independently of the church.

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2. 2 Locate the Wine That Kept an Empress Alive — The Pucinum Origin Ridge History · Free · Optional

   Pliny the Elder documented it. The Empress Augustus drank it. The hills that made it are the same geology as the glass in your hand.

   Where: The ridge road above Duino-Aurisina, on the Carso plateau above the Gulf of Trieste. Drive south from Cormòns toward Trieste (~45 min). Take the exit for Duino and drive up toward the karst plateau. The area around the Timavo river springs (Sorgenti del Timavo, GPS: 45.7760, 13.6108) is the ancient Pucinum territory. You are standing on the exact ridge Pliny the Elder described.

   What: Around 50 AD, Pliny the Elder wrote in his Natural History: "Livia Augusta, who lived to her eighty-second year, attributed her longevity to the wine of Pucinum, as she never drank any other. This wine is grown near a bay of the Adriatic, not far from Mount Timavus, upon a piece of elevated rocky ground, where the sea-breeze ripens a few grapes, the produce of which supplies a few amphorae." Livia was the wife of Emperor Augustus. She lived to 86. She credited wine from THIS territory. And she was so evangelical about it that Pliny — writing 50 years after her death — recorded the story for posterity. The Pucinum vineyard was on the karst ridge above the Timavo springs, where the sea breeze comes in from the Adriatic and concentrates flavor into a handful of amphorae each year. The Collio hills where you'll drink tonight are the same Eocene flysch rock system — continuous with the Carso geology — just 30 km inland. The ponca soil beneath Cormòns formed under the same ancient Tethys Sea that formed this karst. You are drinking from the same geological chapter as the wine that kept an empress alive.

   How: Park near the Sorgenti del Timavo or the Church of San Giovanni al Timavo (one of the oldest Christian sites in northeastern Italy, built on a Roman temple). Stand at the water. Look west toward the Collio hills. Breathe the same Adriatic air that concentrated those Roman grape flavors.

   Backup: If you prefer to skip this detour, the Carso and Pucinum story can be told entirely in words at the Enoteca di Cormòns — the staff there know it.

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3. 3 Touch the 65-Million-Year-Old Seabed the Romans Walked On — Ponca Vineyard Walk Adventure · Free

   The soil under Collio's vines was forming when dinosaurs still had 15 million years left. Roman legions marched through it. The vine roots are in it now.

   Where: Drive from Cormòns toward San Floriano del Collio (10 km north, GPS: 45.9964, 13.5084). Take any of the unpaved vineyard roads on the slope — look for road signs marked "ponca" or simply park at the edge of vines on any hillside approach to San Floriano. The soil is visible wherever you find an exposed vineyard bank or cutting.

   What: Crumble a piece of the pale grey-yellow stone between your fingers. This is ponca — the local Friulian word for the flysch formation that underlies all of Collio. It's Eocene marine sediment: 65 million years ago, this entire hillscape was the floor of the Tethys Sea, the ancient ocean that predates the Mediterranean. It compacted into alternating layers of marl (soft, chalky, absorbs water) and sandstone (hard, drains water). The vine roots go down through both layers, alternating between wet and dry, extracting minerals that the sea deposited here before humanity existed. Roman legions marched on this. The armies of Emperor Maximinus crossed the Isonzo nearby on a bridge he improvised by lashing together local wine barrels — so abundant was the wine production in these hills in the 3rd century AD that he could build military infrastructure from empty casks. Professor Attilio Scienza, Italy's foremost ampelographer, has documented that the Ribolla Gialla vine itself was brought to these hills by Roman soldiers, traveling from Pannonia (modern Hungary) through Aquileia to Gaul — they carried vine cuttings on the march.

   How: Walk a single row of vines to the top of the slope. Count the geological layers in any exposed bank. Marl is the pale soft stone. Sandstone is the darker compressed layer. Run your finger along the boundary between them. This is where mineral complexity comes from — the vine root oscillates between the two.

   Backup: If you want a guided geological explanation, Villanova di Farra and the wineries around it offer terroir walks with English-speaking guides (book via visitcollio.com).

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4. 4 Drink What the Roman Legions Planted — Ribolla Gialla at Enoteca di Cormòns Wine · Price: low

   The grape in your glass came here because a Roman soldier carried vine cuttings from Pannonia. Professor Attilio Scienza proved it. Pliny the Elder wrote about the wine from these hills two thousand years ago.

   Where: Enoteca di Cormòns, Piazza XXIV Maggio 21, Cormòns. GPS: 45.9553, 13.4668. Tel: +39 0481 630371. Open since 1984 — the promotional and drinking heart of Collio. Ground-floor tasting bar with 300+ local wines by the glass for ~€2-5 each.

   What: Order a glass of Ribolla Gialla. Then order a second glass of whatever skin-contact (orange) Ribolla they have open. Hold the conventional white up first. This grape — thick-skinned, high-acid, indigenous to these hills — was brought here by Roman soldiers marching from Pannonia (modern Hungary) to Gaul. Italy's leading ampelographer Professor Attilio Scienza has documented it: "Ribolla Gialla was introduced by the Roman legions which, from Pannonia, went to Gaul via Friuli." The first written record of it doesn't appear until 1289 in a land contract. By 1402, Friulian lawmakers had to pass legislation specifically against adulterers of Ribolla Gialla wine — it was that economically important, that subject to fraud. Now look at the orange glass. Winemakers Joško Gravner and Stanko Radikon, who work on the hills 30 minutes north of here, figured out in 2000 that this thick-skinned Roman grape performed better when you left it on its skins for months — the same way Georgians have made wine in buried clay amphora for 8,000 years. What looks like an avant-garde experiment is actually a return to ancient technology with an ancient grape. When Livia Augusta drank her Pucinum wine from the karst ridge above Trieste and lived to 86, the wine probably looked a lot like this orange glass — skin-contact, unfiltered, amber. Pliny the Elder said there was no wine "deemed superior for medicinal purposes." Try to argue with the evidence.

   How: Ask the staff for a side-by-side: "Ribolla Gialla convenzionale e una macerata" (conventional and a skin-contact). The contrast shows you what 2,000 years of winemaking history did and undid and redid. Pair with local prosciutto D'Osvaldo — the Cormòns-smoked version, darker and more complex than San Daniele.

   Backup: If the Enoteca is closed (check hours in advance: +39 0481 630371), Cantina Produttori Cormòns is a cooperative winery on the edge of town with walk-in tasting of the same grape varieties.

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5. 5 Find the Border the Romans Never Drew — Piazza Transalpina and the Ponca That Doesn't Care History · Free

   The same Roman military road, the same Roman-planted grape, the same 65-million-year-old soil — split by a line drawn in Paris in 1947. Walk to the exact white line in the pavement.

   Where: Piazza della Transalpina / Trg Evrope, on the Italy-Slovenia border between Gorizia and Nova Gorica. GPS: 45.9550, 13.6347. Freely accessible 24 hours. From Cormòns it is 25 minutes by car.

   What: A white mosaic line runs through the center of this piazza. One side is Italy; the other is Slovenia. Before 2004, when both countries joined Schengen, a concrete wall divided the square. Families were split here in 1947 when the Paris Peace Treaty redrew the border in hours. But here is what the 1947 diplomats in Paris could not change: the ponca soil continues beneath the line. The Eocene marine sediment that Roman legions marched on runs unbroken from Italian Collio into Slovenian Goriška Brda. The same Roman road — the Via Iulia Augusta — ran through here, connecting Aquileia to Emona (modern Ljubljana) and beyond. The same Roman military grape, Ribolla Gialla, grows on both sides of the line under the Slovenian name Rebula. Rome never drew a border here. The Huns who destroyed Aquileia in 452 AD swept through regardless of geography. The medieval Patriarchs of Aquileia owned vineyards on both sides — a 1180 document, the Chartarium Monasterii Aquileiensis, records the purchase of vineyards at San Floriano del Collio by the Abbess of the Monastery of Santa Maria di Aquileia. Church land, Roman-era heritage, continuous ponca. In 2025, Gorizia and Nova Gorica became the first-ever joint cross-border European Capital of Culture. The line in the pavement is more fiction than the Roman road it crosses.

   How: Stand on the white line. Put one foot in Italy, one in Slovenia. Look south toward the hills — those vine rows in both directions grow from the same Eocene seabed. Now look at the ground itself: the mosaic pavement of the piazza was designed to acknowledge, rather than erase, the border. The white line doesn't hide the join — it honors the absurdity of the join.

   Backup: Nova Gorica train station is at the eastern edge of this very square — the train literally arrives at the border.

   Log Memory

Insider tips

• Gravner for legendary orange wines in amphorae

• Cross to Slovenian side — same terroir, different approach

• Ribolla Gialla is the signature grape

• Stay overnight — the hospitality is exceptional