Kaja Kohv studied tourism and hotel management, before a lecture on wine etiquette made her decide to become a winemaker. After attending wine school, Kaja moved to Sydney where she worked as a sommelier, and gained her first winemaking experience, working exclusively in a cellar and learning from scratch. Back in Europe, she worked a harvest with a local grower, and in March 2020 she rented 0.8 ha of vineyards from the Luxembourgish government. The release required that all the parcels must be farmed organically and preferably with some biodynamic approaches, meaning that from day one there have been no synthetic chemical applications. On top of this, Kaja uses plant treatments as well as propolis (produced by bees), essential oils, and algae extract to support the vines and reduce the use of copper and sulphur. Kaja started out slowly, filtering her first, small batch of wines in 2020, before switching to unfiltered a year later. She takes a pragmatic approach to skin contact, using short macerations of a few days to one week, to extract the nutrients essential for feeding the natural yeast, and blending skin contact with direct press juice to support healthy fermentations. She focuses on local varieties: Riesling, Pinot Blanc, and Elbling.
In Kaja’s words, Elbling is a diva. It’s well-suited to cool climate regions and has been grown in the Mosel for over 2000 years but today, less than 5% of vineyards in Luxembourg are planted with it. The delicate skins of the grapes make it difficult to farm, but they yield high juice and minerality. Roche Liquide, liquid rock, shows what this ancient variety is capable of. The grapes were harvested from 45 year old vines, rooted deep in limestone, and pressed in whole bunches before aging in 70% stainless steel and a single, 300l old oak barrel, spending a full year on the lees. Mineral and with high acidity, it’s great with sushi, oysters, or white fish. Only 1345 bottles made.