How Losing “Tocai” Helped Friulano Tell Its Real Story
More Than a Name
When my dad started importing wine about 20 years ago now, one of our labels read Tocai Friulano. A few years later it arrived with the Tocai gone—simply Friulano. I didn’t think much of it then. It wasn’t until I stood in the vineyards of Collio that I understood what it meant—and it left me with a question I couldn’t shake: can a wine lose its name and still keep its identity?
The change wasn’t marketing. To the EU, “Tocai” sat too close to “Tokaj,” Hungary’s famed sweet-wine region. When Hungary joined the EU in 2004 it won exclusive rights to the name; the European Court of Justice ruled against Friuli in 2005, and by 2007 Tocai was gone. The irony is that the two are unrelated—Tokaji is built on Furmint, Friulano on the grape once called Sauvignon Vert. Growers gave up a name they’d used their whole lives over a resemblance that lived only on paper.
But Collio has always been a place where names are contested. These hills were Austro-Hungarian for centuries, then Italian after the First World War. After the Second World War a new border split the historic Collio in two, leaving some families with their house in Italy and their vineyards in Yugoslavia, in what is now Slovenia’s Brda. Fittingly, when Collio became a DOC in 1968, the first bottle released under the name was a Tocai—Primosic’s, from 1967. The grape that christened the appellation is the same one later stripped of its name: a region that knows what it means to change while staying what it is.
Identity Beyond the Label
My palate was refreshed to Friulano in the tasting room, before I ever hit the vineyards. At the Enoteca di Cormons, educator Cynthia Chaplin led us through ten of the region’s Friulano Collio DOC wines. With Friulano, the giveaway is the finish: as the wine turns rich and almost waxy, it closes on a note of bitter almond—mandorla—that pulls everything into focus. That almond note is its signature: a grape fuller and rounder than you’d expect, built on texture more than acidity, with Collio’s ponca lending a saline edge that keeps the weight from turning heavy. It’s a wine of persistence rather than fireworks.
As we journeyed to Collio—thanks to the Consorzio Vini Collio, who took the time and effort to host us on this journey—we embarked on our week in the region. Below are a few memorable Friulano’s we encountered in both the vineyard, glass, and the hands who made the wine:
Memorable Friulano’s
Borgo Conventi — Friulano Collio DOC (2021 & 2018)
Technical Notes: A Collio Friulano built by blending three separate vineyard plots—the technique the estate settled on to get the wine it wanted.
Why It Stood Out: Paolo Corso was one of the more vibrant personalities we met along the way. He’s made the wine at Borgo Conventi since the 1990s, and through every change of hands—the estate has passed to big conglomerates more than once—he’s kept it rooted in Collio. We tasted at a U-shaped table built around a huge slab of ponca, and as he led us through a vertical of Friulano—2025, 2023, 2021, 2018, and 2016—he kept perching another delicate glass on the rock, the whole table holding its breath over his next move. It was the older bottles that made the case: the 2021 and 2018 were stellar, proof of what this wine becomes with a few years behind it. Watching him pour across a decade of vintages, you could see how he’s spent that time dialing in the blend of three plots until it clicked.
Website: https://www.borgoconventi.it/en/
Drius — Friulano “Sensar,” Friuli Isonzo DOC 2022
Technical Notes: Crafted from old-vine Friulano in neighboring Isonzo, Sensar undergoes a 15-hour cold maceration followed by one year in stainless steel and two additional years of bottle aging, resulting in a layered, expressive wine with remarkable depth, freshness, and a classic bitter almond finish.
Why It Stood Out: The name is a family story. “Sensar” was what they called grandfather Sergio—a sensâl, the Friulian word for the broker who once mediated the sale of a farmer’s fruit—and the wine keeps his name alive. What stayed with me most, though, was how the family farms. Erica Drius, Sergio’s grand-daughter, told us how the vines are stalked by the tignola, the grape moth whose larvae pierce the berries and open the door to rot; rather than spray insecticide, Drius hangs small pheromone dispensers through the rows to confuse the males and keep them from mating. A quieter, more patient kind of protection—and it tells you everything about how they’d rather work.
Website: https://www.driusmauro.it/
Humar — Friulano Collio DOC 2025
Technical Notes: A single-vineyard Friulano from 65-year-old vines of an aromatic clone, produced in a limited run of approximately 4,000 bottles. Fermented with around seven days of skin contact, it displays a luminous straw color with greenish highlights.
Why It Stood Out: Natasha and her daughter Vanessa curated this as a walk through the vineyard itself, stopping at each plot to taste, see, and feel the vines—and along the way we were greeted by Chanel, the vineyard cat, who stole our hearts as she dozed in the shade beneath the rows. The wine lived up to the setting. This was the aromatic end of Friulano: white flowers on the nose, then orchard fruit—apple and apricot with a flash of pineapple. The skin contact shows up as texture, a phenolic, chalky grip with a savory sage-leaf note on the close. For a wine off such old vines, it felt strikingly bright.
Website: https://www.humar.it/en/
Primosic — Friulano Collio DOC 2024
Technical Notes: Fermented and aged exclusively in stainless steel to preserve freshness and varietal purity. Sourced from the lower slopes of Monte Calvario, where the soils transition from classic ponca to more alluvial, river-shaped deposits, the wine offers vibrant aromatics, crisp acidity, and a refined mineral character with Friulano’s hallmark subtle almond finish.
Why It Stood Out: Our tasting was led by Nicola, the third generation of the family—the same Primosics who bottled the very first DOC Collio, a Tocai, back in 1967. He’s kept faith with that inherited philosophy while quietly evolving it, and this Friulano was where it showed. Primosic calls this the grape’s “fresh side”: raised only in steel, it was the higher-toned, more aromatic version—round in the mouth, with medium-plus acidity and that signature raw-almond bitterness on the finish. Where the old-vine and skin-contact wines leaned into texture, this one stayed nervy and direct.
Website: https://primosic.com/
Honorable Mentions
• Tenuta Stella – Collio Friulano DOC 2024 (https://www.tenutastellacollio.it/en/)
• Terre del Faet – Collio Friulano DOC 2024 (https://terredelfaet.it/)
• Livon – Collio Friulano DOC “Manditocai” 2023 (https://livon.it/en/)
• Zorzon – Collio Friulano DOC 2025 (https://zorzon.it/en/vini-en/)
• Damijan Podversic – Friulano 2023 (tasted from barrel) (https://www.damijanpodversic.com/)
When Losing a Name Isn’t Losing an Identity
Closing this article, my thoughts keep returning to this: the ruling took a word off a label, but never the grape, the soil, or the hands that farm it. If anything, losing “Tocai” pushed producers deeper into what couldn’t be legislated away—the ponca soil and the almond-tinged wine that could only come from here. The name got smaller; the identity got clearer.
Perhaps that’s why the bitterness lingers on the palate. Not as a reminder of what was lost, but of everything that endured.
