The Collio Gravel Loop Among the Border Vineyards

There are lands that produce wines known the world over and yet remain empty of tourists. The Collio around Gorizia is one of these: its hills yield some of the most esteemed white wines in Italy, yet those who ride through them by bike often find themselves alone, among orderly rows and silent white roads. It's an elegant vineyard hill country, poised on the border with Slovenia, that mass tourism has never really discovered, and for this very reason it offers a gravel experience of rare quiet.

The wine hills

The Collio is a mosaic of soft hills carpeted with vines, where the grape varieties that made Friuli famous grow: the Ribolla Gialla above all, the symbol of this land, but also the great white wines and the orange wines that made the area's producers celebrated among connoisseurs. Cycling here means crossing an agricultural landscape tended like a garden, where every slope is a design of vine rows and every bend opens a different view of the Julian Pre-Alps to the north and the plain to the south.

The heart of a gravel loop in this area revolves around the wine villages. Cormons, with its square and its Central European atmosphere, is a natural starting point. From there you climb toward the hamlets scattered among the vines, you pass through the Oslavia area, sadly known for the battles of the Great War and today reborn thanks to its wines, and you draw close to the border with Slovenia, where the old stone markers trace a boundary that today is only memory. Crossing that line in your mind's eye, among Italian and Slovenian vineyards that blur into one another, is one of the strongest evocations of this corner of Europe, where the history of the twentieth century has left deep marks on the landscape.

How to cycle it

Getting there is simple, setting off from Gorizia or Cormons, both well connected, and the loop can be shaped to your own legs by picking from the dense network of white and secondary roads that weave through the hills. The surface is the classic of gravel: stretches of white road, dirt tracks among the vineyards and a few pieces of tarmac linking them, ideal for a gravel bike or a mountain bike, less so for a road bike. Here, unlike the valley-floor cycle paths, the terrain is hilly: you climb and descend continuously following the undulation of the slopes, and the effort is medium in nature, made of short but repeated ramps that you feel in the legs by the end of the day. These are not mountains, but not flatland either: it's the constant up and down that gives rhythm to cycling in the vineyard.

When to go

The best time runs from May to September. Late spring brings the tender green of the just-sprouted rows and bright days, while the end of summer brings the anticipation of the harvest, with the bunches ripening and the air scented with grapes. September in particular is a magical month: the hills come alive with the work of the harvest but remain, all the same, far from the great tourist flows. Even in high season the Collio keeps its surprising emptiness: while other Italian wine regions are besieged, here you cycle among the vines crossing paths with more tractors than other cyclists. The summer heat is tempered by the elevation of the hills and by the breeze, but in the central hours it's still worth seeking shade.

A practical tip

A practical tip: plan a stop at a winery along the route, but do so with moderation and toward the end of the day, perhaps booking in advance because many are small and family-run. Tasting a Ribolla Gialla while looking at the hills that produced it, after having cycled them, is the right way to close the loop. And keep your tyres a bit wider and softer: the white roads of the Collio are splendid but in places rough, and a comfortable setup lets you enjoy the landscape instead of fighting the surface.

Practical guides for Como

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• Where to eat in Como
• How to get to Como