Draga - Miklus Winery

Grape selection before the cellar

Grape selection comes first for Mitja Miklus, winemaker at Draga - Miklus Winery in San Floriano Del Collio, where the day’s work begins in the vineyard before it reaches the cellar. He is the estate’s owner and winemaker, and also titolare of Società Agricola DRAGA di Miklus Mitja & C. Ss, a role that keeps the agricultural and cellar decisions close to the same hands. The family line reaches back to the early 1900s, when Ivan Miklus acquired the first vineyard lands in this part of Collio. With his son Franz, he cut into the hard, grainy ground by hand, working to a depth of 80 cm to establish the first hectare of vines. The modern winery was established in 1992, but its discipline sits on that older labor. Today the work is carried by Milan, Anna, and Mitja, the fourth generation, with Mitja shaping the wines as enologist and winemaker. His own sentence for the method is plain: “For years we have been aiming at increasing the attention to the vineyards and grape selection, as it is from the raw material that a high quality product is made.”

Ponca, skin contact, and a small estate scale

The estate farms 13 hectares of vines across two parcels in the hills of San Floriano del Collio, without pesticides and with the raw material kept at the center of the method. The ground is ponca, the Collio formation of calcareous marl and sandstone from the Eocene period, grainy underfoot and central to the mineral line the region is known for. The site sits at approximately 270 meters above sea level, with the Alps to the north and the Adriatic to the south, a position that gives the vines both cool air and maritime lift. Draga works within Collio DOC and keeps a broad range on the bench: Friulano, Ribolla Gialla, Malvasia, Traminer, Pinot Grigio, Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Merlot. The house is also known for orange wines, made from white grapes with extended skin contact during fermentation, a Collio discipline that asks for judgment in extraction as much as in ripeness. Annual production is about 50,000 bottles, enough to show range, not enough to hide behind scale. Pinot Grigio Draga, Sauvignon Draga, Ribolla Gialla Draga, and Malvasia Miklus form the clearest reading of the house style.

A cellar held close to the hills

The cellar at Draga - Miklus feels tied to the slope around it rather than set apart from it. Tastings happen in a traditional cellar space, with vineyards close by and the quiet of a rural estate doing some of the framing. This is a small, family-run address, often described as a hidden gem, but the phrase matters less than the way the place holds its scale: intimate, agricultural, and unhurried. The room does not need theater. The work sits in the bottles, in the decision to keep cultivation organic, in the continued attention to grape selection, and in the family’s use of a Slovenian name, Draga, meaning precious. One current marker is precise enough: Friulano Draga 2024 received a Vinibuoni d'Italia gold medal in 2026.