As linked in WineTerroirist, there is a nicely done, if a bit superficial, article by AmandaBarnes on Croatian wines:
CroatianWines .
Interestingly, she makes no mention of Tribidrag (Crljenak Kastelanski). She only labels PlavicMalic as a son of Zinfandel. That’s it.
She refers to the grape Malvazija Istarska (Malvasia d’Istriana in Italy) as the 2’nd most planted variety. This variety is genetically distinct from the other Malvasias in the World. It’s a variety that I think makes lovely wines & should be planted all up&down the Coast of Calif.
Probably about the best source for Croatian Wines is FrankDeitrich’s BlueDanube Wine Imports ( BlueDanube ). They do DTC sales, rare for an importer.
Tom
Well, the great emperor Marcus Aurelius Probus was from a Dalmatian wine making family and planted vines throughout central and western Europe, overturning the earlier ban on new vineyards after he had pacified the area. Maybe he even had the troops plant some of those Croatian grapes? The grapes from central and eastern Europe are pretty interesting to me, as some of them have much longer histories than the French grapes people are more familiar with. And while people tend to dismiss many of the wines because they haven’t received the marketing the French have for the past two hundred years, the wines are increasingly better. Interesting, although rather superficial article.
Plavac Mali is a fantastic grape. Big and bold but capable of great finesse and polish, too, when treated well. Like zin/trib. Dingač produces a nice example that I believe is available very affordable in the US.
There’s not a lot of tribidrag left in Croatia anymore, to my knowledge, though I know Carole Meredith is on these boards and I’m sure could speak vastly more authoritatively on the subject.
I think that Plavac Mali is a superior grape to Zin. It can get very ripe and yet retain remarkable levels of acidity even when the alcohol level is pushing 16%. Zinfandels this ripe tend to get too jammy and blowzy, while Plavac Mali never seems to be lacking in structure. I guess it must be due to its parentage - the Zinfandel part gives the body and flavor, while the lesser known one (Dobričić) seems to have granted the wine capability to retain acidity remarkably well.
I definitely agree that the wines from the Dingač region are some of the best Plavac Malis out there, but often I’ve found myself enjoying the wines from the neighboring Postup more; the Dingač wines tend to be bigger and higher in alcohol, while the Postup wines are often a bit more restrained and less massive (although big wines with chewy body and 14,5-15% alcohol all the same). I also agree how Malvazija Istarska is a wonderful white variety and constantly makes some of the most interesting wines in the Istrian peninsula - not just in Croatia, but also in Slovenia and in the easternmost end of Friuli as well.
Funny the article didn’t say really anything about the local varieties beyond the three usual suspects while still saying how important they are in the Croatian wine scene.
I went to Croatia a few months ago and we spent a day wine tasting in the Peljesac peninsula. Very impressed with a lot of the wines although I tended to favor the crisp whites made of Posip and some rose wines from Plavic Mali. Could have been the sunshine and warm weather (and the food we were eating generally) but we did find some really nice plavic mali reds at Milos. We bought around 6 bottles there in total.
Very underrated wines and truthfully it’s hard to find any of the good stuff here. If anyone knows which retailers carry a decent mix of Croatian wines, I’m listening!
I’ve found some good Croatian wines at K&L on occasion. Other local wine shops in Oakland like minimo and Bay Grape often have some too. They’re likely to have wines from Slovenia - just north of Croatia - as well.
Among Croatian wines I’ve had over the past year, the Piquentum Refošk from Istria was probably my favorite, and the Šipun Žlahtina (white) and Šipun Sansigot (red), both from the island of Krk, were also nice, and good value. Wines from both labels are imported by Blue Danube.
We went there back in 2015 when the daytime temperatures were constantly around 40°C (104°F) and even during nighttime it never went below 25-27°C (77-80°F). I’m so happy that our hotel had an AC, otherwise it would’ve been impossible to sleep there.
I thought many Plavac Malis were great even in that temperature, but many bars served all the wines, be it red or white, straight from the fridge, so that might’ve helped a lot! Never had an interesting rosé Plavac Mali, but lots of great, vibrant whites from Pošip, Grk and Žlahtina.
During our visit to the Peljesac peninsula a great bushfire broke out and destroyed lots of vineyards and the Grgić Vina winery of Mike Grgich. We were stuck there for the whole day and only in the late evening the firefighters managed to clear fire enough so that cars could drive out from the Peninsula safely.
Great times!
I developed an extremely immoderate love of Plavac in earlier days, when money and I were essentially unacquainted. Avia Plavac, from the island of Hvar. US$1.00 per bottle at Central Liquors in Washington, D.C. 10% discount by the case. I was living in and buying for a group home (‘hippy house’, in the vernacular of the time). Neither I, nor probably anybody else on the planet knew of any possible connection to Zinfandel, but I remember having fleeting flashbacks to the gallons of Gallo Zin I was buying a few years earlier. I am not normally nostalgic, but I’m going ahead to the site Tom recommends. Croatian wines DTC? What’s not to like.
Dan Kravitz
There has been quite a lot of new Tribidrag planting in the last few years. This is understandable considering that a much larger international market exists for Zinfandel than for Plavac mali.
The few Tribidrag vines remaining in Croatia when we found it in 2001 were diseased so buds were sent to UC Davis for virus elimination and then in 2012 the healthy plants were sent back to Croatia to become the mother vines for new plantings. Several hundred acres have been planted so far with more to come.
Here are my Croatian colleagues Edi Maletic and Ivan Pejic standing in the newly-planted mother block in 2014.
Awesome! Thank you Carole for the info; how great it is to hear that Tribidrag is increasingly thriving back in the homeland.