Simon J Woolf & Friends on Wild and Wonderful Wines
Some varieties take to skin maceration like a duck to water. Malvasia Istriana is one of those, and there are a handful of producers in Croatia’s “Northern Tuscany” who are exploiting this quite delightfully -Giorgio Clai, Kabola and Benvenuti are the ones I’ve discovered so far.
Decanter magazine’s September 2014 issue features my regional profile of Istria, arguably Croatia’s finest wine region – an area deserving a lot more attention than it currently gets. The wines and producers recommended in that article were necessarily constrained by what Read more
The Morning Claret is delighted to be going on a brief sojourn to Istria later this week. Having travelled a couple of times in the Southern part of Croatia, I’m fascinated to see what the North of the country has Read more
Winemakers can be a tricksy bunch. There are the natural showmen and marketeers, keen to show you their “icon” wines and boast about how much new oak is used for the premium cuvees. Then there are the quiet taciturn types Read more
In my previous post I wrote about a family wine-producing micro-enterprise. The Bura winery produces only around 2,000 bottles each of their key wines, Bura Dingač and Mare Postup. I visited Boris Mrgdić and the Bura family in the morning. Read more
The Pelješac peninsula runs parallel to the Dalmatian coastline like a finger, with just a tiny sliver of adjoining land stopping it from becoming an island. It’s a dry, mountainous landscape, with quiet villages and sandy beaches spread around the Read more
Grk has to be one of the most fascinating grape varieties I’ve ever encountered. You can only find it in the sandy soils of the vineyards surrounding the beach town of Lumbarda, on Korčula island in Croatia. An unnamed present Read more
I’ve had some wonderful encounters with Croatian wines over the years – the muscular reds from Dalmatia, on a visit to Dubrovnik back in 2003, and more recently an excellent Istrian expression of Malvasia. In a few weeks time I’ll Read more