Krzyzowice, Poland
Greater than 10 years in the past, when Mateusz Jania planted a dozen or so grapevines outdoors his mother and father’ home, few shared his imaginative and prescient for Polish viticulture. “Individuals who heard my dream of proudly owning a winery shook their heads in disbelief and advised I’d attempt rising bananas as an alternative,” he says. “The thought appeared so far-fetched.”
Jania—a recipient of a 2025 Sluggish Meals Negroni Week instructional scholarship—now makes wine at Winnica Jania, a vineyard in Krzyz˙owice, Poland, roughly 160 miles northwest of Kraków. At Winnica Jania, he cultivates Vitis vinifera similar to Pinot Noir and makes white and skin-contact wines utilizing PIWI grapes, or fungus-resistant crossings bred within the 20th century.
The latter are suited to his local weather and dedication to minimal-intervention viticulture, however he often faces skeptics. He’s unbothered; individuals who don’t consider PIWI grapes can produce world-class wines are normally “old-school winemakers, or from areas with centuries-old appellations untouched by struggle,” he says. In addition to, Jania sees a throughline between trendy hybrids and discipline blends, and the blended plots of grapes tended to by farmers within the Polish countryside generations in the past.
“We regularly decide PIWI and Vitis grapes on the similar time and create a historic mix on the juice-pressing stage,” he says. “For us, it’s essential to protect custom.” As home and international wine cultures evolve, he’s optimistic about bringing sustainably produced, distinctly Polish wines to homegrown and far-flung audiences. “We’re a inventive and bold group of lovers who know what we’re doing—and we do it very effectively.”
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