The forest, the village, the valley, three landscapes, three thresholds, each shaping how fruits appear, grow and are held in relation. These are not just locations but layers of cultivation, care, resistance and memory. 
The forest holds the wild: the untamed, the uncertain, the fruits not meant for us. Here, fruits are spread by wings, claws, snouts or tentacles. The forest leans toward the village, creeping in. In Topolò, terraces once carved and tended by generations are now slowly reclaimed by the wild, seeds planted by bird droppings, soil ploughed by cinghiali (wild boars) in search of chestnuts. In the village, grapes grow along façades, some are pruned in spring, before the juices start to flow. These  fruits are shared between hands and birds. Shelves in kitchens hold wild herbs soaked in fruit distillates, a merging of two worlds: the cultivated and the wild. The village is a site of entanglement, where domestication and wildness coexist and blur. Further down, we enter the valley, where gardens give way to vineyards. Rows and rows of vines follow the contours of the hills. Monocultures dominate, softly interrupted by patches of grass or a treeline here and there. Many of these vines are hybrids, bred for resistance to mildew, insects and drought. Most are grafted onto hardy rootstocks, fused with other varieties to ensure a reliable, profitable harvest. Nestled among these vineyards, we find an orchard (1), home to rare and old fruit varieties, carefully tended over years. Even here, grafting is necessary. No fruit without fusion. Trees are spliced and bound together: bark meeting bark, sealed with tree resin, beeswax and linenoil, wrapped in old bicycle tires until they’ve become one. A slow, careful merging. 

Moving between forest, village, and valley, we follow these borderlands, the ecotones, where one world spills into another. Here we find our stories: not fixed in place, but shaped by movement, by entanglement, by transformation. These thresholds ask us to reconsider our place. What does it mean to merge? To cross over? To become with a place, instead of simply being in it?
By observing fruit trees in these three spaces, we are tracing stories of connection and contamination, of care and wild generosity. We ask: How can we get lost in order to unlearn boundaries? How might we taste these entanglements? Our contribution to the Uncommon Fruits project offers three flavors of merging, three drinks that flow from one threshold into another. Following their fluidity, we share not just beverages, but gestures of becoming. With each sip, we offer a part of ourselves to the place, imagining its colors, shapes and memories. With each sip, we take a piece of that place into ourselves, carrying its taste, its questions, its stories. We might forget who we are, and maybe remember where we are.

Breath of a fallen cloud

April 2024

From the window of the house we see what we cannot see from the car driving up to Topolò. Spring softly arrived with the blossom of the wild cherry trees. Fallen clouds sprinkled all over the valley. Also the bees noticed their arrival, following the breath of the fallen clouds, returning with almond scented pollen to wake up the hive. Sparked by the bees’ excitement, we chase the clouds to get to know its smells and tastes. From the parking, we take the path down into the forest, looking up for cherry blossom clouds. We encounter many that safely and softly rest out of our reach. It’s the bees privilege to wander these pillows of almond scented flowers. It’s ours to wander and wonder about its taste, scent and touch. Walking on, we slowly accept our place at the roots of the blossom clouds. The wild cherry trees are reaching out to the sun, sharing their place with other trees competing for some rays. These wild cherries are way out of our reach. A wild cherry is to be picked by birds, by squirrels and explored with the nose by bees. We can only taste the wild cherry if it falls, and reach it before wild pigs, deers, and other critters take their share. Maybe the wild cherry trees are not to be consumed by us, maybe their role is to show us seasonal change. Make us aware of the transition of winter to summer as one of the first trees that blossoms. And when their white and pink petals wither and fall to the forest floor, this gives a sign to other trees to start their cycle from hibernation to growth again. 

The arrival of the blossom makes me sigh, a long breath released. While winter still sits in my body, I’m invited to listen to the bees waking up, getting cozy on top of the trees. A sigh of transition, of letting go of one season, and opening up to receive the next. 
Wandering further, we see a white cloud appearing at the roots of the forest. A fallen cherry tree, uprooted, but still connected to the earth. Coming closer we see the branches are full of blossoms and we are finally able to smell them. A sweet aroma of flowers and almonds fills our longing. This is the last breath of a fallen cloud. It is known that dying trees bloom stronger and more beautifully, attracting as many pollinators as possible to spread their future selves. 

What seemed an impossible encounter, appeared within reach of our fingers, noses and tongues. We smelled, tasted and collected the cherry blossoms. We dried and stored them so we could share this experience with others. A few weeks later, we returned to the tree and observed how the last leaves too, were appearing. Together with a sweet group of visitors we tasted its cherry blossom and collected its last leaves. Those leaves were rolled between our palms leaving them scented for the rest of the day. Those cherryleave rolls were dried and stored. We follow the breath of the fallen cloud, one season feeding another, one gathering inviting the next.

Recipe
Hand rolled cherry leaves 

When picking cherry leaves, make sure you distribute your picking. Pick a couple of leaves from a branch, then move to another branch, to ensure the tree has enough surface to soak up the sun, to translate the light into energy, to feed that energy into growth, of fruits, of leaves and renewal.

We collected the cherry leaves from a wild cherry tree in early spring, but they are often hard to reach as they grow taller than domesticated cherries, because they compete with other trees and shrubs to reach the sun rays. Find wild cherry trees on borders of paths and rivers, as they offer cuts into the forest, where more light comes in, and so will offer the possibilities for those branches to grow lower to the ground, within reach. 

Domesticated cherries can be used as well. To release the aroma from the cherry leaves, we will bruise them, they will color from a pale green to a dark green. We do this by taking each leaf between our palms, rolling the leaf until its softer and darker green, until the scent is released. 

We collect these leaves in a jar and press them down, putting something heavy on the top. For example some baking paper and a stone, so that no air reaches the leaves. Place the jar in a dark and cool spot. After two days, the scent will be amplified, with almond and cherry flower notes. The leaves are then dried in the shade, ideally with a bit of a draft.The dry leaves can be stored for a long time. You can use them to make a hot infusion or make a cold brew overnight in the fridge.

Seasoning bellies and bottles

May 2025

Returning to Masseris, like Topolò, another village folded into the borderlands of Italy and Slovenia, is like stepping back into a memory that continues to grow. Two years ago, we came to this quiet mountain village nestled below Mount Matajur to mark the changing of seasons through food. Each autumn, local restaurants gather to offer tastes of the new season, a ritual of renewal through flavor. Guests sit at long tables while small, carefully composed bites make their way to the table, a menu of many menu’s, bites of many places and shared memories of flavors returning.

This time, we return with different questions about fruits, herbs, and how they are held and transformed by the hands of those who live here. In recent years, Dora has joined in the pear harvest, where the fruit is pressed into juice and left to ferment on its own terms. If forgotten long enough, the juice becomes vinegar, sharp and alive. What’s left behind from pressing is not discarded but distilled into a clear spirit. We learn to press not too hard, to leave some juice for the flavor to carry through into the distillate. This spirit becomes the base for a local herbal elixir, containing up to 40 wild herbs collected from February to November. Each batch is seasonal: herbs are dried and added to the alcohol, then drained before the next season’s harvest is infused. One season rests upon another. The taste accumulates like a landscape remembered in layers.

We learn all this walking with Lojza (2), who grew up with a herbal elder and has since continued the practice on the edge of Masseris. Her garden spills into the wild, both tended and untented. We follow her and Dora across a stony slope, tasting bitter leaves and fragrant stems, picking up words in both Italian and Slovene. The air is filled with the quiet choreography of gathering, softly speaking, and sensing.

On the terrace, we sip from tiny glasses containing different seasoned stories. Lojza offers us cake, slices of cured meat, and memories. Each year’s elixir tastes different, shaped by the herbs that were found and the ones that remained unfound. She keeps a careful log of what is gathered, some years reaching 40 herbs, others only 22. The recipe is co-written by the hill and the hand. It’s a rhythm of offering and receiving. “The herbs pull you closer to the ground,” she says. “They invite you to smell, to remember.”

Recipe
A whole pear cycle

This gentle, holistic handling of fruit and herbs feeds our imagination. From this gesture of care, we envision two drinks: one alcoholic, one not. Both interweave the mountain, the season and the work of the hands. First, the pear juice is pressed and infused with herbs, branches, needles and slowly reduced into a dark syrup. This syrup can be used to make sparkling lemonades or soda floats. The pressed remains are distilled and then steeped again with wild herbs. Allowing seasonal fluxes to feed the flavor profile. In this process we’re remembering the cycle of cheesemaking, winemaking and other ripening processes, where the landscape is palatable and shaping its taste. This distillate can be sipped in small glasses or stirred into a cocktail. Celebrating seasoning not only as flavor, but as a way of being with the land, tasting time, touching a place with our bellies.

Recipe
Pillows carrying fruits & nuts 

Together with the Uncommon Fruits team, we spent an afternoon in the kitchen with nonna Maria Gilda (3), exchanging recipes, stories, and techniques shaped by the rhythms of late autumn. The idea was simple: to explore how dried fruits and nuts, ingredients common across the Alpe-Adria region during colder months, carry memory and meaning through different culinary traditions, even as they cross national borders.

We had long wanted to learn how to make štruklji from nonna Maria, who is known throughout the valley for her delicate, hand-shaped sweet dumplings. The dough is potato based, made directly from hot potatoes. For the filling we used old bread, grappa soaked grapes, pine nuts, lots of walnuts and a bit of sugar. In return, we shared a recipe from Philipp’s Austrian roots: steamed yeast dumplings filled with slow-cooked plums, topped with poppy seeds and brown butter.

Kolovrat / Kolavrat

November 2024 / August 2025

Kolovrat lies just beyond Topolò, a mountain border, as many mountains are. From the village, we walk into the hills, first through forest, then slowly upward where trees give way to shrubs and bushes. More sun, less shade. Here, the plants thrive in the dry, stony soil, full of essential oils, full of rich flavors and scents. Juniper reigns on Kolovrat, the queen of this mountain bearing fruit from two seasons. The younger berries are pale green, while the mature ones turn a deep blue. Our hands are pricked by the sharp needles of the juniper bushes as we collect the ripe, blue berries. Sometimes, we find old queens: bare wood, no more green, no more berries. Philipp breaks open a piece, an intense, woody aroma escapes, deep and dry, almost like incense. We take both the sun-dried wood and the blue berries with us. As we walk, Philipp notices the scent of thyme, somewhere close. He follows his nose to the exposed rock, where thyme clings tightly to the sun-warmed stone. The scent is vivid, fresh, deeply green. Kolovrat and Topolò, like Masseris and Matajur, are mountain and village pairs, they belong together. They draw a line from wild to cultivated, from uninhabitable to home. From these deep flavors and rich colors, the idea of a drink begins to form. Reduced pear juice, herbal resin, sun, stone. A name appears too, Kolavrat.

Rootstocks: Tintoria, Clinto, Fragolino, Americano

April 2025 

The history of grape varieties stretches localities beyond borders. For centuries, grapevines have been cultivated from small garden plots to vast industrial vineyards. During a visit to Alberto (4), a winemaker, restaurant owner, and generous host, we learned about root stocks. Uncrafted, often overlooked varieties like Fragolino, Tintoria, Clinto, and Americano have been in his family’s care for generations, originally planted by his grandfather. Despite their natural resilience against today’s environmental stresses, resisting insects, mildew, and disease, these grape varieties have long been banned from commercial wine production. Their story is entangled with a specific moment in European agriculture: the Phylloxera crisis of the late 19th century. To combat the devastating effects of the insect, resistant American grape (5) species were introduced into European vineyards. But these same vines carried a new concern. When fermented, they produced higher levels of methanol, a type of alcohol associated with blindness, neurological damage, and addiction. As a result, a national ban on these so-called “root wines” was enacted in Italy, marking one of the first instances of strict governmental regulation over food production.
From then on, these once-promising vines were allowed only as rootstocks, grafted beneath approved Vitis vinifera varieties. The resulting wines would be safe, familiar, and commercially viable. But the original varieties remained, especially in rural areas like Friuli, quietly growing along fences, in gardens, or as table grapes, often passed down through generations. At Scribano winery, Alberto shares how many of his peers have removed these vines, some of them planted decades ago. But he refuses. These plants, he tells us, are part of his story. He prunes them, waters them, and cares for them just as he does for his certified commercial varieties. For him, they’re not just forbidden grapes, they’re living memories, a lineage rooted in the soil.
This emotional connection, passed from hand to hand, through the quiet labor of tending, is what drew us in. We began to wonder: how can we work with these fruits without triggering the fears of methanol, and still honor their flavor and heritage? Can we create a drink that isn’t wine, but something else entirely? We asked Alberto directly: would he be willing to collaborate on a beverage that brings together “uncommon fruits” and “unwanted” grapes, a drink that speaks to both past and present? A kind of non-wine that invites tasting as a form of storytelling?
We’re beginning to imagine a collaboration that reconnects (industrial) wine production with a more diverse cultivation of fruits, reviving a once-rich agricultural tradition (6) that included cherries, pears, plums, and other fruits now pushed to the margins by the dominance of viticulture. Today, wine defines the region’s identity, produced in a spectrum of styles and supported by agritourism, biodynamic farming, and generations of family-run estates. This monoculture sits alongside a landscape shaped by multiple layers of use, memory, and inheritance. Now, in early April, we’re mapping the region and connecting with local farmers, listening to what this year’s harvest might bring. In the Brda/Collio area, the orchard is hopeful. The pears, plums, and cherries promise a generous yield. We’re dreaming of blends, not just of flavors, but of stories, gestures, and landscapes, old and new, cultivated and wild.

Today, much of this diversity has vanished beneath the rows of monoculture vineyards that dominate the borderland between Italy and Slovenia. Amid the vines, we find signs of resistance: Gregor’s orchard, an oasis of care and preservation, where rare and forgotten fruit varieties continue to grow. These remnants of abundance invite us to reconsider what’s been lost and to imagine how the fruits of the past might ferment new futures. Can we work with what remains, using existing infrastructures to bring diversity back into our palates and landscapes? Could a wine infused with fruit become a story, not just of flavor, but of memory, ecology and return?

A first step towards a collective ecology

May 2025

Visiting Alessandro’s (7) vineyard, Primo Passo, nestled at the edge of the Tagliamento river, is like stepping into a living experiment in care, ecology and community. The river itself, untamed and morphologically intact, is a rare force in the Alpine landscape, carving wide floodplains that shift with time. It serves as both a metaphor and a companion to the work being done in the vineyard: dynamic, diverse and deeply relational.

Primo Passo, meaning “first step” is exactly that, a beginning. It marks a movement away from extractive models of agriculture focused solely on yield and toward a slower, more collective rhythm. Alessandro, together with a beautiful and diverse community, is tending not only to vines but to the web of life surrounding them. As we walk, he introduces us to wild grasses, flowering bushes, bees, and a forest path that welcomes animals crossing the valley. 

This place invites a reimagining of what it means to grow, not just grapes, but relationships. It asks how we can create spaces that allow for difference, for pause, for connection. The vineyard offers refuge to people who haven’t always found belonging within mainstream systems, inviting them to root themselves in soil and community, to find healing through touch and time. I’m reminded of Sophie Strand’s essay, The Body as An Ecotone, a threshold space where different ecosystems meet and mingle. At Primo Passo, individuality is held within a larger collective ecology, echoing the original meaning of the word: Oikos, or household. Here, home is made not only for people, but for animals, plants, and all those passing through. Watching this community grow, step by step, is a quiet revolution. 

We end our visit by tasting a sparkling wine, made through an old technique that bridges time. Wine from the previous year is blended with fresh grape juice from the current harvest, whose sugars and wild yeasts initiate a second fermentation. This fusion, carefully calculated and bottled, traps CO₂ and creates the gentle fizz of a frizzante. It is a symbiosis that fuses aged flavors and fresh fruity notes. Inspired by this slow, transformative process, we begin to imagine a drink of our own, perhaps made with fruit from Gregor’s orchard. A blend of wine, abundant in the Brda valley, brought to life by a rare and special fruit juice. It would take two years to complete, but the wait would be part of the journey: a reason to return, to follow the process, to bring stories and share companionship. These visits from forest to vineyard, from the village to the valley, infuse our imagined drinks with more than flavors and methods. They carry the memory of walking together, learning to stay with the trouble (8) and allowing something meaningful to appear, slowly.

Until the grapes are picked and pressed 

September 2025

An early morning rise, and a one-hour drive from Topolò to Kojsko, to help pick grapes at Kmetija Štekar, a tenth-generation winemaker family in the Slovene hills of Goriška Brda. We meet Tamara and Janko through Gregor. Their vineyard and orchard are neighboring: the orchard sits on the west side of the hill, the vineyard on the south. Each side offers a different climate to its fruits. The south side, of course, gets more sun, but also more wind. It’s exposed to the sea and a breeze flows inland, bringing fresh, saline air to the vines.

Janko Štekar was one of the first, and for a long time, the only natural winemaker in this region. We learn about the different grapes: each variety with its own flavor, its own resistance to weather, its own timing. Every year is different. And you never know what the wine will become until the grapes are pressed into juice. Many grape growers don’t make their own wine, it’s two different jobs: being a ‘farmer’ and being a ‘chef’. It’s rare for the person who grows the ingredients to also process, age, and finish the product. Cheesemakers, for example, often don’t keep their own animals, they work with milk from different farms. When you think about it, it makes sense: running the full cycle is a lot to take on. And yet, that’s exactly what Janko and Tamara do. Growers, makers, affineurs. 

Janko speaks of growth, not just in the vineyard, but in the cellar too. It’s about balance: caring for the vines on the hill and caring for the wines as they age. Not growing too big. Knowing your niche. Moving with intention between the grapes and the barrels. That’s what makes their wine so good. Being a farmer means depending on the weather. Being a farmer in the hills of Goriška Brda also means finding ways to keep wild animals from stealing your harvest. Tamara tells us a story from a few years ago, during ripening. You never really know anything for sure, not until the grapes are pressed. One early, misty morning, just before harvest, she and Janko woke to strange, chaotic sounds in the vineyard. Even before they arrived, they could smell it: wild boars had been there. They’d left their stench, the smell of a stable, and taken a large part of the harvest with them. “Nothing is sure until the grapes are picked and pressed,” she says. The story reveals the fragility of the network, the tension of waiting, and the unpredictability of nature. Can we tell this story with a recipe? Maybe a wild boar ragout on a chestnut pancake, served with a deep orange wine. An aged Pinot Gris that borders on red in flavor, with tannins and warm caramel notes from the barrel. If the grapes are given the chance to be picked, pressed, aged, then this is what the wine could become.

Feeding the Ecotone

Wine, the most popular fruit drink in the world, is so often spoken of in terms of terroir: the taste of a place. Its geology, its climate, its care, its hands. Fruits and hands are ultimately intertwined. Hands mark when fruit is not meant for us: when it grows out of reach - the forest. When generations of hands pick from the same tree, using the same tools and recipes - the village. And when hands care so deeply, that root and fruit are reshaped into new species - the valley.

Our first visit to Gregor’s orchard was in early spring. No fruit yet, only buds blushing pink against the cool air. Gregor walked us through the sloping terrain of Goriška Brda, just near the Italian border, pointing out the remarkable diversity of fruit trees he has nurtured over the years. We had driven from Topolò, crossing from forest into valley, from wild to cultivated. With each passing kilometre, the landscape shifted. Vines thickened. Vineyards crept in, replacing what was once a patchwork of mixed fruit species. Now, Gregor’s orchard stands as an island of biodiversity, surrounded by a sea of monoculture grapes. What stories linger between these landscapes? Can they still speak to each other - perhaps even taste each other?