A Mouthful of Wine

A Day in the Golden Valley

Too early in the morning, we’re plucked from our hotel in Dubrovnik and deposited at the small airport for our flight east to Zagreb. Just two hours later, we’re on our way by car to Slavonia, in the southeastern leg of Croatia bounded on three sides by Hungary, Serbia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. We’re chauffered by the cheerful 23-year-old son of the label designer for Vlado Krauthaker in the town of Kutjevo, considered the center of Slavonian winemaking. The scenery here is very different from the coast, where precipitous, rocky slopes slant down to water’s edge and even inland valleys are ringed by craggy mountain ranges. Here there are vast fields of wheat and what looks like rye, and we’re told that much tobacco, too, is grown along this 55km valley with rounded ranges in the distance, which has been called the golden valley (Vallis Aurea) since Roman times. The vineyards are planted on the south slopes of the Krndija and Papuk mountains at 200 to 400 meters elevation. The region produces 80 to 90% white wine, and is known for elegant wines from the grasevina grape, a.k.a. welschriesling. We visit only two producers here, but if one thing stands out to us in this region, it is the commitment to experimentation and development.

Vlado Krauthaker
Our first visit is with Vlado Krauthaker (below), a serious gentleman highly regarded for his leadership in regional winemaking. As we take a bumpy tour of the vineyards by car, we look to the top of the slopes to a Slavonian oak forest, part of a national park and the source of high-quality Slavonian oak barrels. Vlado Krauthaker has 24 hectares of his own, plus 42 within a sort of labor-sharing partnership that doesn’t quite come clear in translation. Seventy percent of his production is grasevina, which likes the hard clay soil. Only 7% of his production is red, but he’s planting more black grapes to achieve 30 to 40%, and is running experiments in conjunction with the university in Zagreb with 26 black grape varieties to determine what works: merlot, syrah, and cab are performing well so far. Many of the vines we see on the hillside are planted at high density in the French style, and we’re told the land is worked by horses. Everything is hand harvested.

We descend to Krauthaker’s airy new tasting rooms, where we’re treated to dozens of wines, some of which have recently become available in the US. First is grasevina three ways:

GRASEVINA 2006 This spent 4 months on its lees with 50% ML. It has a very citrusy lemon-lime and slightly mineral nose; dry, with high acidity and light to medium body. Creamy citrus and herbs dominate the flavor. This is well done, with a nice mouth-feel.
GRASEVINA 2006, half-dry (5.5 g/l RS). This has a less citrusy nose than the dry version, with mineral; it’s off-dry with high acidity and medium body. Medium-intensity pear, lime, and slight melon on the palate. Nice, but I prefer the dry one.
GRASEVINA 2006, a special selection of old vines. This is a slightly darker lemon hue than the two wines above, with a medium-intensity citrus and mineral nose. A slight spritz leads on the palate of this off-dry wine with medium-high acidity to balance the sweetness, and medium-full body. Herbal, lemony, and nicely made.

MANZONI 2005 (riesling x pinot blanc cross, 1964) Vlado Krauthaker is involved in many experiments, including this stainless-steel fermented batch of 2000 to 3000 bottles. The wine is medium gold with medium-intensity honey and creamy lees aromas (it underwent full ML); dry with medium-high acidity and a fairly full body, slight oxidation, honey, and mineral on the palate with a long honey finish. Very interesting.
ZELENAC 2005 Zelenac is rotgipfler, grown only in Slavonia and one village in Austria and made only by Krauthaker in Croatia. This example is slightly off-dry (5 g/l RS) with high acidity, full body, and well balanced alcohol. The palate is very mineral, with white fruit and slight honey. Short to med length; well made and interesting.
CHARDONNAY “Rosenberg” 2005 This spent 8-1/2 months on the lees in oak and was bottled unfiltered. It has oak on the nose, with a slight chemical undernote; dry with medium acidity and body, creamy oak and white fruit on the palate. The length is medium and the wine will develop nicely in the bottle judging from the 2004, which now has hazelnut aromas. This is probably the best chardonnay effort we’ve seen in Croatia.
SAUVIGNON BLANC 2005 Lufthansa selected this wine to serve on their international flights. It’s made with 60% stainless-steel and 40% old-barrique fermentation. A medium lemon-gold in color, this has the intense tropical guava and lemongrass aromas of New World sauvignon blanc, with a short to medium length.

At the end of our tasting—all before lunch—we open a dozen experimental bottles of young pinot noir, which are being monitored for their progress. On our way to the restaurant in town, Vlado points out the cooperative winery where he worked for fourteen years during the Communist period before starting his own operation in 1992. After our enjoyable, light meal we make our way to Ivan Enjingi, whose winery building sits just outside the tiny town of Venje.

Ivan Enjingi
We have been told that Ivan Enjingi (shown below, far right, with his enologists) is a mercurial soul, but perhaps we’ve been immunized by our native habitat of New York—we find a generous, even gregarious man with twinkling eyes and a smooth cap of silvery hair waiting in his private cellar with a feast of cheeses and meats arranged on a barrel top. We sip Enjingi Zweigelt, a red with lovely aromatic herb, bayleaf, and red currant aromas until half of his pair of young enologists, Josipa Andrijanic, arrives. The other (Milan Budinski) joins us as we wander through the fermentation rooms taking samples from the taps. It’s difficult to take notes on the hoof like this, but we taste Enjingi’s dry, late-harvest grasevina, a beautiful late-harvest Rhine riesling, about a dozen experiments and wines in development, and two real stand-outs:

VENJE 2002 Named after the town where Enjingi is based, this is a blend of riesling, pinot gris, welschriesling, sauvignon blanc, and traminac that is made only in favorable years and is matured in barrique. It has medium body and an Old World flavor: slightly oxidized from barrique maturation, very subtle oak, minerals, plus dried pear and white peach. A red version of Venje is in the making, too, a blend of zweigelt, pinot noir, cabernet, merlot, and frankovka.

PINOT CRNI 2000 This curious pinot noir has a heavy spritz in the bottle, and uncharacteristically high alcohol at over 15%, but it is an impressive wine. It is barrique matured and bottled unfiltered, with beetroot, violets, and sweet oak on the nose, plus vanilla, ripe black plums, and blackberries on the palate—medium-bodied with medium length. It’s been seven years since harvest, but I’d be interested to see this in another eight.

After tasting, we drive up the hillside to see the new event space and guest house Ivan has built, which has a lovely view of the town of Venje, the Enjingi vineyards, and the Golden Valley beyond (shown). The building next door is where Enjingi’s barrels are made—he has a team who craft his Slavonian oak barrels in the workshop here. We also examine a machine harvester that Ivan has adapted to suit his particular requirements. Here is a man who makes no apology for doing things his own way, and the results are a startling success. We linger, talking and sipping Enjingi grappa, into the early evening, when we are forced to sadly begin our two-and-a-half-hour drive back to Zagreb and, early tomorrow, our flight to New York.

Highlights of Old Dubrovnik

Old Dubrovnik is a wonderful town for the history buff, who can wander for hours with a guidebook looking at buildings, and the amateur photographer, who can capture the details of atmosphere and architecture (shown left) without regard for the madding crowds.

We arrive early to roam atop the fortification walls (admission $10/person), which only those in relatively good stair-climbing shape should attempt, sunscreen in hand. We make more than half the three-hour circuit on the wide and undulating brick path, enjoying views of aquamarine sea and cannon portals on the outside (Bokar Bastion and Lovrijenac Fortress shown below) and time-worn lanes on the inside. Then we climb down to have a cappuccino and toast, and read the Herald Tribune.

For lunch, we meet Vido B. and his wife. Vido is a former machinery engineer in long-distance shipping—once the major industry in these parts—and now a politician. He tells us a bit about the life, how it stopped being much fun because improvements in the speed of loading and offloading meant you wouldn’t be spending more than eight hours or so in any port, and the industrial ports were far from their cities. He drives us back across the Tudmana bridge and down to the bayside, to a small restaurant hidden below the road at water’s edge. We can see black sea urchins among the stones in the clear water from our table. Vido orders an excellent posip—Krajancic’s “Intrada,” possibly the best posip we’ve had—and eat very good quality marinated anchovies, fish carpaccio, pickled tiny shrimp… Then we have a risotto duo, one with shrimp and a rustic variation with squid ink, and move into the sunshine for a dessert of crepes with burnt-orange caramel.

Back at the hotel, we again take the bus to the old city and visit the excellent wine shop next to the Arsenal Taverna, which carries many hard-to-find Croatian wines, as well as jars of marvelous fig preserves with various flavorings such as orange and cocoa. Vido has recommended a restaurant for dinner, and after wandering the back streets for a while, seeing what we see, we settle ourselves on the lovely rooftop terrace of the seafood restaurant Proto. I order a glass of Grk, a white grape from Korcula which is medium full-bodied and floral, and we have a Greek salad that turns out to be excellent, along with a plate of assorted seafood: cured salmon, a carpaccio of a white-fleshed fish, and pickled shrimp. It occurs to us that any of the coastal white wines we have had—from malvasia in Istria south to even the workhorse marastina grape in the Peljesac—would pair brilliantly with this seafood. Then we share shrimp in a red sauce atop polenta, and a Dubrovnik-style panna cotta for dessert. This is probably the most expensive restaurant we’ve been to on this trip, but the service is excellent and the fish ultrafresh, and we linger, watching swallows swoop between the upper stories of houses. Early in the morning we leave for Zagreb.

Excuses, Excuses!

Why haven't I written here in dog's years? I'm busy writing a book!* But I'm still here to answer questions, so keep writing in.

*More about the book:
It's a completely new way to learn about wine--not by memorizing wine regions, grapes, or vintages, but by knowing what's going on in your own mouth. Acidity, tannin, body...chapter by chapter I home in on one facet of wine and design a tasting that allows you to experience that taste or feeling. You learn what causes that taste in wine, which wines have more or less of it, and how it reacts with different food flavors to make a good or not-so-good match. And it all starts with wine where it matters: in your mouth! Even better, the book will be paired with an album for saving wine labels and tasting notes. (Wherever will you learn to write a tasting note? In the book!) I'll provide more info as it's available.

Odd Grapes: Lagrein

Wines made from the lagrein (la-grine) grape have a dual personality, because of the region they’re almost exclusively from. That region is Alto Adige, which borders Austria in northeastern Italy. Alto Adige was a part of Austria-Germany for centuries until 1919, when it was reassigned to Italy after the war; for this reason, it is still referred to as the Sudtirol, and its language and culture is still largely German. Lagrein’s dual personality arises from this Germanic leaning in an Italian region: Cities are known by alternative German and Italian names (Bozen in German is Bolzano in Italian), German is spoken in most areas, and regional foodstuffs include gulasch made from beef, veal, or pork; dumplings called canederli, often flavored with meat; wiener schnitzel; sauerkraut; and wonderful cow’s milk cheeses. It is impossible to think of lagrein as a typically Italian wine—and yet it could be, if it weren’t so Germanic.

The lagrein grape grows well in the basin around Bolzano, the regional capital of Alto Adige and the northern gate of a wine road that unravels south along the Adige river valley and into Trentino. Any wine lover who has tasted Alto Adige’s many high-quality Austro-Italian whites (look especially for those from Hoffstatter) will be unsurprised that Alto Adige is the Italian region with the highest percentage of DOC wines. And yet, a peculiar circumstance is that most of the wine of this region is made in cooperative wineries, usually associated with less developed grape growing areas that are just beginning a quality wine production. The difference, as Joe Bastianich and David Lynch point out in their excellent book Vino Italiano, is that here the co-ops aren’t government run (often with generic oversight and high production incentives), but have been originated by the farmers themselves. Colterenzio is one of the best-known of these, a co-op of some thirty producers that was formed in the ’60s and produces varietal, estate, and prestige bottlings, much as a private producer would.

The lagrein grape produces a deeply colored and traditionally tannic wine. For years, this was used to beef up the color and structure of other reds in the area, and it is still used for blending (in the EU, a varietally labeled wine, such as “Pinot Noir,” is allowed to have 15% of unnamed grapes in it). In the past, most lagrein was grown on pergolas—overhead trellises that allowed air to circulate beneath the leaf mass, and pickers to stand beneath to harvest. More recently, though, producers have begun training some vines closer to the ground using the guyot method, which tends to promote ripeness, as fruit bunches are more easily exposed to the sunlight. Thus, the rustic lagrein, a difficult ripener, can show quite lush fruit and riper tannins in some varietal bottlings.

The three lagreins I tasted lost their initially rough edges after 15 minutes of air. They would benefit from decanting. But each opened up into a very layered wine, with typical forest flavors among the fruit.

Colterenzio Lagrein “Grieser” 2002 is from the cooperative mentioned above, made from grapes from the Grieser vineyard. It smells of black cherry and stewed black plums, with a slightly medicinal edge along with some spice and cedar from the barrels. The cedar carries over onto the palate, while the fruit becomes an intense sour cherry, along with dry tobacco and forest-floor notes. On day two, the nose becomes less sweet and more herbal, and the palate intensifies from woodsy to almost piney. The woodsy notes overpower the subtle bratwurst I try with this wine, and even salami can’t quite stand up to it, but the wine complements my strong, Roaring Forties blue cheese and a basic Locatelli Romano very nicely. A puttanesca or the Tomato and Sausage Risotto on www.smittenkitchen.com would probably do quite well with this wine.

Tramin Lagrein 2005 is also produced by a cooperative. It has subdued aromas of general red fruit and plum, with a hint of earthiness. The flavor is of superripe blackberries and black cherries, along with brine-cured black olives, with slight wood notes from 50% barrel aging. It is a youthful wine that shows less woodsiness than the older Colterenzio. It is brilliant with the bratwurst and with Boucheron goat cheese (less pungent than the blue) and excellent with sauteed mushroom bruschetta—subtler flavors for a fruitier wine.

Heinrich Mayr’s certified organic vineyards are right on the edge of Bolzano, in danger of being swallowed by the expanding city. “Nusserhof” Lagrein Riserva 2003 is a deep, opaque purple, suggesting its fuller body and extract than the previous wines. The aroma is so precisely of plum tarts in almond shortbread crust that I turn to the oven for a double-check. There are also chocolate-covered cherries and, oddly enough, buttered popcorn. It is only the nose that’s sweet here—on the palate, a sharp sour cherry takes over, with underlying notes of cocoa, hay, and forest leaves. Each of these three wines has a typical, slightly bitter finish, but the Nusserhof is the only one with any length. It’s also the only one of the three that hasn’t seen oak—the wine is aged in the bottle before release, and is still approaching its peak, in the next three to five years. This, too, is good with the subtler food flavors of mushrooms, Boucheron, bratwurst, and becomes somewhat neutral with the blue cheese.

How to Find Them
Colterenzio: $9.99 in New York at Astor Wines, or contact the importer, Domaine Select Wine Estates, for availability elsewhere
Tramin: $16.99 in New York at Union Square Wines, also available at Harlem Vintage, or contact the importer, Winebow, for availability elsewhere
Heinrich Mayr: $22.99 in New York at Astor Wines, or contact the importer, Louis/Dressner, for availability elsewhere.

Food and Wine on the Road to Dubrovnik

Marija and Anita pick us up in the morning for our drive to Dubrovnik, the last coastal destination on our journey. On the way out of Orebic, we stop at the old Riviera Hotel to pick up some rootstock for Marija. The old hotel, which looks like a Communist-era castle but is probably earlier, has been bought by a man from Texas and his Croatian wife. They’ll remodel it into ten or eleven luxury suites, and there is already a winery in the cellar, where we taste a very promising posip from a tank that will be blended with the same wine matured in barrels. Next to the hotel they’ve planted zinfandel vines, which will begin producing in another four years or so.

A little later as we drive through the countryside we stop unannounced at Frano Milos’s winery, where we hurriedly taste three wines while he waits for an American tour to arrive. Frano is a curly-headed artist, perhaps in his early forties, and very charismatic—as testified by the magazine articles posted in his tasting room, showing him in GQ-esque poses. His work also decorates these walls, giving the tasting room a pleasant, personalized touch. Clearly a visit here is meant to be a well rounded sensory experience. But the wines I’ve seen so highly praised in Croatian wine publications deliver less than expected. Frano seems to be embracing a wine style from the time of his grandfather that strikes me as anachronistic in light of the clean, scientifically driven wines that are possible now. (These wines aren’t available in the US.)

MILOS PLAVAC 2004 has medium-intensity red fruit on the nose, along with slight beef broth. It has light to medium body and medium tannin, with flavors of red cherries, very slight brett, and dry leaves. A wild, rustic wine that should be fruitier and less dusty.
STAGNUM 2004: 100% plavac mali. The wine has a bit of bottle stink that will blow off, but also an odd aroma of canned peas that I’d expect in a much older wine. In the mouth it shows a medium body, subdued fruit, and a long dried tobacco finish.
STAGNUM 2005 dessert wine (grapes unknown to me): This is lightly sweet, with dill and wild herbs on the nose, and more herbs on the palate. Very pleasant.

Lunch in the Shadow of Europe’s Great Wall
We continue driving and reach the town of Ston, which sits next to Mali Ston (Little Ston) at the narrowest part of the hinge where the Peljesac peninsula connects to the mainland. Starting in the 1300s, the Dubrovnik Republic constructed a great wall 5.5 kilometers long that trails over the hill between Ston and Mali Ston, punctuated by lookout points and forts (shown). The longest such fortification in Europe, it was built to protect Ston, which has produced salt since Roman times, and whose salt revenues were an important contribution to the coffers of the republic. We stop only long enough to peek at the modern salt pans as we drive through Ston toward our lunch destination in Mali Ston. This diminutive Ston has an outsized reputation for seafood and shellfish, situated as it is at the end of the bay inlet, where the water is lightly salty and highly mineral. We eat lunch on the waterfront outside Taverna Bota Sare, which used to be a salt storage cellar; it is two stories tall inside, with a barrel ceiling. We have a singular meal of fresh local shellfish. One dish consists of large blue mussels; clams; fawn-brown mussels that are imported from Bosnia, 30 km away over the hill, as it’s illegal for ecological reasons to obtain them from the bay; and a mollusk described to us as a Noah’s Ark: the bivalve is shaped like the hull of a ship, and one needs to remove a “key,” a small, fin-shaped piece of shell that sits between the two main shells and projects into the muscle of the creature inside. Once the key is removed, the shell can be pried open easily with the fingers using the keyhole. This mixed mollusk dish is served in a white wine and garlic sauce, with a dish of just the brown mussels (my favorite) served alongside in a lightly creamy tomato broth. We mop it all up with thick, slightly crunchy semolina bread. (Shown: Marija demonstrates removal of the "key.") We drink the local marastina wine and talk about klapa, the typical group vocal music of the Dalmatian coast that is accompanied by bass, guitars, and mandolins, among other instruments. The music playing in the restaurant is a klapa rendition of one of the most popular Croatian singers, Oliver. Other good groups are Ragusa and Maestral, but Marija and Anita each have friends and acquaintances who sing in local groups.

After lunch we wind through construction on the tiny local highway that snakes around the edges of coastal mountains and is the only road to Dubrovnik. (Construction delays give us more time to gaze contentedly at the little islands off the coast, shown.) We enter the city via the spindly white Tudmana bridge high above Gruz bay and not so high above a gigantic white cruise ship docked outside the tiny old harbor. After settling in at our hotel, we head into the old city by bus. Our first impression is that this historic treasure reminds us of New York’s South Street Seaport in August: shuffling tour groups “following the sign,” and a uniformity of vendors selling mid-quality jewelry in classic or historically inspired designs to appeal to the seniors piling off cruise ships. Things are looking up after a bottle of Enjingi grasevina (welschriesling) at Arsenal Taverna, which overlooks the old harbor and the modern hotels and fancy houses on the hillside outside the old city walls. We love the wine’s funky minerality and surprising delicacy. This is a good place to sample Croatian wines or see late-night musical groups, and the food is pleasant but average. We’ll return to the old city tomorrow in search of hidden gems and the life of the city away from the main drag.

A Structured Approach (or, The Importance of Texture)

Let’s face it: Flavor is much more fun than texture. After all, when you eat a pizza, you’re enjoying the saltiness of the pepperoni, the earthiness of the mushrooms, or the stinky savor of extra garlic, not analyzing the acid content of the tomato sauce. On the other hand, you might well take notice of the crispness of the crust or whether the amount of cheese is just right or too gloopy. The texture of crust and cheese needs to be in balance for the pizza to be good. It’s the same with wine. The textural elements of wine—the acid, tannin, sugars, alcohol, and body—provide an essential framework for presenting the flavors.

The texture of wine is more commonly known as its structure. So what effect does each of these structural elements have on your perception of a wine?

Acidity: This is perceived as crispness or lemoniness in whites and gives a certain zing to reds. It makes your mouth water (produce saliva), which is why wines with higher acid levels are consistently the best with food. Acidity in wine derives from that in the grapes, although fruit acids are also allowed to be added to certain wines, if necessary, in the winery.

Tannin: This causes the dry, chalky feeling on your tongue, gums, and cheeks when you drink red wine. There is much less tannin in rose wines, and for most people it’s usually imperceptible in whites. Many people dislike tannin, but it is a necessary element in the aging process of red wines, and involves many of the beneficial antioxidants that red wines have become known for. Tannin comes from the skins, seeds, and stems of grapes, and sometimes from the wood cells of barrels used in the maturation process.

Sweetness: Sugar and alcohol both contribute to a wine’s body. Sweetness is both a flavor and a structural element—sugars are, of course, sweet, but they also give a sense of richness and thickness (body) to wine. Dessert wines will feel thicker in your mouth than dry table wines. Sugars are present in the grapes themselves, especially ripe ones, although in some areas sugars are allowed to be added to the wine during wine making.

Alcohol: This, too, contributes to body—a high-alcohol wine will have more apparent thickness in your mouth than one with a lower alcohol level. The alcohol in wine is a product of fermentation, when yeast cells consume the sugars in the grape juice and produce carbon dioxide and alcohol.

How Structure Works for You

Noticing the structure of different foods will help you pair them with wine. It is very often the structure of food—the acidity, sweetness, spiciness, oiliness, or creaminess—not the flavors, that determines which wine will pair well with it. An example of this is the way a creamy dish like fettucine alfredo is lightened up when paired with a zesty white with plenty of acid. Pairings can be made using opposites or like elements. In the example above, the acidity in the zesty white cuts through the heavy creaminess of the alfredo sauce, refreshing your mouth between bites. But some very rich dishes benefit from a correspondingly rich wine. For instance, grilled salmon, an oily fish, pairs brilliantly with a rich, lightly oaky chardonnay. Knowing which foods and wines will match well comes with practice. Experimentation never hurts—after all, if the food is good and the wine is good, you’ll enjoy them both, even if it’s not a match made in heaven.

The best reason to notice structure is to help yourself decide what you like. To help you, many restaurants and wine shops now sort their wines by categories related to structure: “Fresh and Crisp” (acid, body), “Hearty Reds” (body, tannin). As you learn about regional and grape characteristics, you’ll be able to predict where in the world of wine to go for the particular overall sensation you want: You’ll head to warm climates for full-bodied wines; cool climates for racy, acidic ones; to New World countries such as Australia or the U.S. for reds with smoother tannin. It is these tendencies that pro tasters consider at blind tastings--they consider the structure first, to arrive at the region and the grape, and even the producer and vintage, of the wine in their glass. And whatever their personal tastes, critics ultimately evaluate the balance of flavor and structure in writing reviews or assigning scores. 

In the end, without structure, wine is just fruit juice!

 

 

Around Town: Investigating Turkish Wine

When most Americans think of the gastronomy of Turkey, two things come immediately to mind--one not technically gastronomic, although it does involve the belly. At any rate, wine doesn’t figure. So I was delighted to find Turks & Frogs, a West Village wine bar that started as a French antiques shop owned by Turkish brothers, where Turks and frogs continue to mingle on the wine list.

Only one producer of Turkish wine is imported to the United States—Kavaklidere—but those wines are abundant on the international wine list at Turks & Frogs. We sit at the bar overlooking West 11th Street and sample the lineup, including, of course, dishes of fantastic hummus, labneh yogurt blended with walnuts, fat grapeleaves stuffed with cinnamon-scented rice and currants, and pita bread for scooping. There is also a cozy second room perfect for receiving friends into the wee hours (shown).

Turkey has hundreds of indigenous grapes, the result of some 6,000 years of wine making. Only about fifty of those native grapes are currently grown, and international varieties such as chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon are now planted. Kavaklidere has three wineries and five of their own vineyards around Turkey, and they also purchase grapes from regional growers. At this moment, they are the single producer that best represents the quality and variety of Turkish wine.

We start with the one white on the list, called Cankaya and made from the emir grape, grown south of Ankara in the center of Turkey. This is a refreshing wine with simple melon and pear flavors and a pleasantly bitter finish. It reminds me of a Soave, the medium-bodied white from Italy. ($8/glass)

The four red wines we sample are lighter in body and texture than the inky, highly extracted reds we’ve grown accustomed to. This, frankly, is refreshing, as it allows us to taste these unusual grapes without fighting tannin or an overpowering fruit salad. We begin with an international blend of carignan and alicante that creates the kind of friendly, juicy plum-flavored wine one would expect from these grapes (“Vinart,” $12/glass).

Far more interesting is the wine “Ancyra,” made from the grape kalecik karasi in the Ankara region. The color is light, even lighter than pinot noir, and the tannin very light, which makes this a good choice for sipping without food. Many will want this wine to be fruitier, but as it is, it offers an underlayer of lovely violet perfume and an elusive sensation of sweetness. ($12/glass)

Next is the grape bogazkere from the Diyarbakir region in the southeast of Turkey, toward the Syrian border. This is a nice food wine, with medium body and tannin, and a restrained sour-cherry and raspberry flavor. The oak is subtle, not sweet, the case with all of these red wines. ($50/bottle)

Finally, we try a bottle that is not yet on the list at Turks & Frogs, although we know what our vote would be! The winery is called Kocabag, and is located in Cappadocia (central eastern Turkey) near one of the Kavaklidere facilities, allowing a cooperation between the two producers. The okuzgozu grape gives this wine a deeper color than the previous reds, and a lovely deep blackberry and ripe black cherry aroma. It is the most sumptuous of these four reds, and the one that is closest to a new-world wine style.

Turkish wine is exported more and more, given that consumption of alcohol within Turkey is discouraged under Islam, but it is still by no means easy to find. If you don’t have access to the West Village, for Turks & Frogs (323 West 11th St./www.turksandfrogs.com), or Tribeca for the restaurant of the same name (458 Greenwich St.), try calling your local Turkish restaurant to ask what’s on their wine list. To buy bottles at retail, Taste of Turkey, in Virginia (www.tasteofturkey.com) has the best selection of Kavaklidere wines, but you’ll need to live in a state that allows wine to be shipped in. Barring that, call the U.S. importer, House of Burgundy (212-582-6888), to find out what wine shop in your area has an account, then go there to ask about special-ordering the wine.

Marko Polo's Hometown, and the Wine He May Have Drank

After gazing longingly for two days at the picturesque walled town of Korcula (shown) across the water from our hotel balcony, we finally hop on the ferry and head back to the island with Boris. He has arranged for his former boss, at Marco Polo Tours in Korcula town, to give us a tour of the old city. This charming, professorial man in a houndstooth jacket clearly loves his native city. He leads us up the steps to the old walled city—steps that used to be a drawbridge over the moat. On the outside of the city gate is a relief of St Mark’s lion—the lion of Venice. For some 400 years, until about 1800, Korcula was a part of the Venetian empire, at the same time that Orebic, across the water, was the farthest outpost of the Dubrovnik Republic. Just inside the main gate is the early Renaissance St. Mark’s Cathedral, with more lions guarding the portal, and two Tintorettos, among other treasures, inside. As we walk through town, we’re told that the streets were laid out in a fishbone pattern in order to control the passage of hot and cold breezes through the city. Marko Polo’s house (shown at bottom) is a picturesque ruin at the end of a passage overhung by mandarin trees and flowering bushes, but there are carefully numbered stones lying in a pile inside the foundations, awaiting the coming restoration and museumification. The ruins are so evocative that I find myself hoping they don’t restore it too completely. We climb the lookout tower attached to the house that once gave a view of this region’s extensive and highly profitable shipping traffic, as well as wargoing ships that were financed as business investments. Now we see only a giant white cruise ship anchored to the north.

The P.Z. Posip Cooperative
From Korcula, we drive inland and meet enologist Janko Jovanov at the side of the road overlooking Cara (“char-a”). Cara is both a town and a designated wine region on Korcula. We look down into a narrow valley and see an industrial-looking winery and some 130 grape-growing plots (shown). This is the cooperative producer P.Z. Posip, which makes about 500,000 bottles a year. The grape plots (growing the indigenous posip grape) are farmed by their 130-odd growers, who are issued guidelines by the government and annual spraying and maintenance plans by the winery. The result is individual plots of differing qualities. The best fruit, not more than 10% of the harvest, is selected for 20,000-30,000 bottles of the premium Marko Polo Posip, which is produced only in years when grape quality is sufficient.

We descend to the vineyards and talk about the history of posip production here. Before the phylloxera disaster in the late 1800s, there were 4000ha of grapes growing on Korcula, of more than fifty different grape varieties, and production was about 70% red wine. Now there are fewer than 400ha, of eleven varieties, and the production is 70% white wine. Janko tells us of mass emigrations of Korculans after phylloxera wiped out grape growing on the island, with the result that there are now communities of Korculans as far away as Australia and Brazil. The posip grape was once the predominant white variety in the general area. Now it’s almost exclusively grown on Korcula, although it is being planted on the islands of Brac and Hvar in an effort to regain its prominence as a quality white grape. Still, Janko says it is difficult to get reliable posip cuttings for grafting without providing the plants for the cuttings themselves—the grape is just not common enough to be able to buy plants. Before lunch, we drive to the other end of this small valley to Smokvica (“little fig”), which is the second designated village for posip production here. On the other end of the island, the white wine called Grk is produced from the grape of the same name, but we won't taste this until we're in Dubrovnik.

Food to Return For
Our second outstanding lunch in two days is at Mate in the town of Pupnat. It is another small restaurant in a stone room with a wood fireplace, where our hostess is the sister of our wonderful tour guide in Korcula town. We’re served an antipasti platter of two homemade cheeses, home-cured bacon and prosciutto, grilled eggplant, a brilliant eggplant spread with capers and spinach in it, homemade bread in slice and braid form, olives—plus an omelet of ham and wild asparagus. (As this thin, slightly bitter, intensely asparagussy asparagus is one of my favorite things, this makes me rapturously happy.) By now Aldo and I are full and fearful of upsetting our still-delicate stomachs, but out come three brilliant handmade pastas. One is ravioli stuffed with local goat cheese; one is quill pasta with whole shrimp and a light tomato cream sauce; and the last is my favorite: quill pasta with wild fennel and spiced with a whole chile. This is not all: Our hostess’s husband arrives and prepares the coals and grate in the fireplace to grill lamb basted with a fig leaf dipped in olive oil. Finally, dessert arrives, and it is no small thing. These treats are sublimely different from what we’re used to. There’s a granita of rosemary and local juniper and possibly a little lemon juice that I vow to try to re-create at home; light fried twists of dough dusted with powdered sugar that tastes of orange-flower water; a walnut-and-carrot cake with a two-inch-tall center layer of whipped cheese that has a slight banana flavor; and a granular and not-too-sweet chocolate almond torte accented with a little hot red pepper.

We taste three wines from P.Z. Posip, of which only the Marko Polo is available in the States.
RUKATAC 2005 is a regional wine labeled “Korcula Wine Region,” made from the marastina grape local to Korcula and the Peljesac. It has light pear and melon on the nose, with slight mineral; light-bodied with only medium acidity, it has a pleasant citrus flavor, but is fairly simple. Naturally, it’s quite enjoyable with the local food we’re eating.
POSIP CARA 2005: This is the entry-level posip, but we find that posip has enough personality that even a basic wine well-made from it has a lot to offer. Again, there is a light pear/melon aroma; medium acidity and body; and on the palate a creamy citrus, pear, and melon flavor. There has been no ML, but the wine was matured in large neutral barrels for 2-1/2 months on the lees. It’s a very pleasant wine with good balance.
MARKO POLO POSIP 2005 This has light citrus and vanilla, and ripe pear on the nose; the body is medium-full, with fairly intense pear on the palate, and a medium-long bitter-almond finish. (This underwent a 3-4 hour maceration, no ML, neutral oak.) US retail is about $18.

Later, sitting at the hotel with Boris, Marija, and Anita, we talk about the experimentation underway in the Peljesac. Marija and a partner in Dubrovnik are investing in a new planting scheme, reclaiming some old terraces that are now overgrown, and planting a few hectares to zinfandel to see what it will do in its native land. As the family is already pioneering cabernet in the Peljesac, this doesn’t seem like too bad an idea, even if it is a marketing move. The agricultural university in Zagreb has also reacted to the zinfandel discovery, by slowly cultivating crljenak, the genealogical parent grape of zinfandel, primitivo, and plavac mali. From all we’ve heard, it seems that most Croatian producers value their indigenous grape heritage even as plans are underway to experiment and grow the wine industry going forward.

The Hanging Vineyards of Dingac and Postup

We arrive by ferry on one end of the island of Korcula and are picked up by Marija Mrgudic and her son Boris, who drive us to the ferry dock at the other end of the island. This is a sneak preview only—we’re leaving the island immediately for Orebic, on the mainland, and will return to Korcula in a day or two. Orebic is a waterfront town on the edge of the Peljesac peninsula, where the renowned wine producing areas of Dingac and Postup cling precariously to hillside terraces overlooking the Adriatic. In terms of prestige, Dingac and Postup are the Napa and Sonoma of Croatia. Marija Mrgudic and her brother Niko Bura and their families are a leading wine producer in the area, under the name Bura Estate Winery. Boris is in his twenties, and does marketing and PR for the winery while also working in marketing for a local hotel group. He spends his weekend driving us through vineyards, crisscrossing the Peljesac, and talking with us about the growing private wine industry and rampant experimentation in the region, notably with plavac mali’s cousin, zinfandel.

(Quick digression on pronunciation: The letter ‘c’ in these Croatian place names tends to be pronounced ‘ch’ or sometimes ‘tz’. Very approximately: ‘ding-gotch’, ‘or-uh-bitch’, ‘kor-chula’, ‘pell-yuh-shotz’.)

Our Lady of Angels
First thing in the morning, Marija and her spicy friend Anita, a lawyer and artist, take us up the hill above our waterfront hotel to the 15th-century Monastery of Our Lady of Angels, which offers one of the best views of Korcula, across the water, but also tells us much of the history of Orebic and the families here. This was a shipping town, and the houses along the waterfront belonged to the ship owners and captains, and still have in their front gardens some of the exotic specimens of plants brought back from their travels in the early 20th century. Back during the Venetian empire, when Korcula was controlled by Venice and Orebic was part of the Dubrovnik state, priests and others would use the hillside monastery to observe goings on in Korcula and send smoke-signal reports by relay to Dubrovnik. Outside the monastery is a captain’s cemetery (shown), where local sea captains and other townspeople were buried after there was no more space in the cloister. In the cloister, bodies were buried “standing up,” to conserve space—the stones over their graves are about 2-1/2 feet square. Also there is the gravestone of one of Marija and Niko’s earliest ancestors in this region, from the seventeenth century. Etched into the gravetop stone is an outline of the pointed spade used even back then to plant grapevines in the rocky soil.

The Dingac Vineyards
We drive with Boris through the vineyards on gravel roads almost as precipitous as those on Hvar. There are about 1000ha of vines on the Peljesac peninsula, with about 60ha in Postup and maybe 75 in Dingac—much of the balance is in the valley, which produces table-wine grapes. The vineyards in Dingac (shown top, descending to the Adriatic) and Postup (shown below) are all built on terraces, some only one or two plants wide. The slope is so steep here that, when working certain terraces, the soil tiller has to be roped to the axle of a truck on the road above to keep it from tumbling down the vineyards. The producer Bura owns just over 2 hectares of vineyards. Their plants yield up to 1kg of fruit per vine on the slopes, but higher up, under harsher conditions, the vines will yield an average of only a half kilo per vine.

These hillsides used to be worked with donkeys who would haul grapes over the top of the mountain to the winery in pannier baskets, making maybe three trips a day. Likewise, they would haul the wine back over the mountain to the port of Trstenik for shipping to Europe. In the 1970s, a rock-walled tunnel, like the one on Hvar, was cut through the mountain, making the journey to the winery much easier by truck.

The Famous Grgic
On a promontory at the mouth of the incredibly beautiful, tiny port of Trstenik stands the Grgic winery and the home of winemaker Kresimir Vuckovic. Miljenko Grgic, a vanguard California wine maker and head of the exclusive Grgic Hills Cellar in Rutherford since 1977, famously returned to his Croatian roots in the mid-90s, and opened a winery here. We drop in very briefly and taste:
POSIP 2005, made from grapes bought from Korcula, cold fermented, with 3 months in new French oak. On the nose there is pear and pineapple. The light oak on the nose turns more prominent on the palate, with white fruit flavors and a shortish pineapple finish. This is clearly an international style wine.
PLAVAC MALI 2004. A fairly intense raisin and herbal plum nose leads to flavors of plums, blueberries, tobacco, and subtle oak, with a medium-length plum and tobacco finish. Neither is available in the US.

Eating Local
For lunch Boris drives us into the valley to the tiny town of Kuna, where the Antunovic family runs an agriturismo, where they raise donkeys, sheep, fruits and vegetables, and produce their own prosciutto. This is evident in the Antunovic restaurant, found by stepping into a narrow pedestrian alley and up a few stone steps. It’s a wonderful, dark stone room with beamed ceilings hung with prosciuttos, bacon, and a pig foot here and there. The fresh red roses on each table flanked with benches are family produced as well. We’re offered the traditional tiny glass of grappa with herbs as we walk in—also Antunovic production, along with the dried figs, crystalline with natural sugar, that we eat with the grappa. (We later buy a package of these, strung on string with bay leaves, to take home.) The white wine with lunch is a local variety made from rukatac or marastina, two names for the same grape. It’s soft and pleasant, especially with the rustic homemade food. First we’re presented with plates of home-cured anchovies, and a platter of pickled onions, home-cured olives, prosciutto, cheese, and thick, dense bread. Then there’s a local stew variation from this area of the Peljesac, called pikatic—basically lamb liver and intestine in a heavy, meaty gravy—delicious, but as we discover later, not for the weak of stomach. We also have grilled beefsteak over roasted potatoes and vegetables with a simple plavac mali. And for dessert, with a local sheep cheese that is steeped as a wheel in olive oil, we try a good quality plavac mali (not available in the States):
VEDRAN KIRIDZIJA DINGAC 2004: a medium-extract red that smells of the herbs on the local hillsides, pine, and a light, sweet oak; medium-bodied, plum, blueberry, and herbs on the palate, and a medium length.

Tasting at Matusko
We drive ten minutes to Potomje, at the inland end of the tunnel. This is the location of the still-operating large cooperative winery where growers were obliged to take their grapes during communism. Just down the lane are Matusko and Bura Estate. Matusko is a much larger producer than Bura, at 500,000 liters of total production, and has a shop and cellar where tours can come and taste. Mato Matusko is Marija’s cousin and looks like a movie star cowboy. He is president of a group of eight or so Dingac producers who are trying to create a wine consortium and tourist trail. As for the grapes, Matusko buys from partner-growers according to the position of their vineyards and the quality of the fruit. He provides pesticides, etc., to his partners, but says that the leading producers are heading toward organic farming in anticipation of Croatia’s EU membership. In his cellar, we taste three of his Dingac wines, from 2005, 2003, and 2001. The 2005 is not yet bottled, but promises to be excellent. I find a clean grapey aroma, still-strong acid and tannin with a soft sweet oak on the palate, sumptuous black fruit, and a long and plummy cocoa finish. The 2003 has a brandy/raisin aroma, pleasingly full extract, deep plum on the palate, and the same dusky cocoa-plum finish. Again, the oak is sweet and subtle. The 2001 sits in a barrel at the side of the tasting room. Mato has reserved this for himself, and for good reason—it’s rich and syrupy like aged balsamic. None are available in the States.

Up the Street to Bura
Niko Bura (shown) is a Croatian garagiste, with his setup on the ground floor of his house, and he is one of this region’s leaders in quality. Niko is making wine in the vineyard, not in the winery. Indeed, we met him this morning tilling the soil between newly planted vines on the family’s Dingac hillside. Niko himself is soft-spoken, clearly proud of his artist daughter, whose painting hangs on the wall of the small tasting room, and appears on the label of Bura Galerija, a light cabernet sauvignon that was first released this year, made from grapes grown in a prime valley location. He is also experimenting with marsellane, a cross between cabernet and grenache. It will be three or four years before the first bottling. The wine called Bura, of 100% Dingac plavac mali, was first produced in 1995. This year saw the release of the first bottles of Mare, from Postup plavac mali and named after its maker, Niko’s sister Marija. Only Bura and Mare are available in the US. (Contact the importer, www.vinumusa.com for availability.)

MARE 2004, Postup. For this vintage, the grapes were partially raisined due to lack of water on the hillsides. The wine is an unfiltered opaque purple with an aroma of hay, black fruit, and beef broth. It’s full-bodied, with creamy black fruit (plums, stewed blueberries) and slight raisin, and a long finish of fresh tobacco. Definitely a new-world style wine. (About $45 retail.)
BURA 2004 Dingac. Bura is the masculine to Mare’s feminine. It too is unfiltered; it has more pine on the nose than Mare, stewed black fruit, and hay. It is fuller bodied, rounder, with the same creamy black fruit and long finish. (About $50 retail.)
The BURA 2003 offers herbs on the nose and palate, and more secondary flavors: hay, figs, slight beef broth, stewed blueberries, and a beautiful finish.
The 2002 has less tannin, sweeter oak, and a licorice undernote. It has a hay/camomile aroma, and slight raisin and prune on the palate.

After our longest day of tasting, we’ve experienced an exciting cross-section of Peljesac production that makes us want to go back and taste the wine of every other producer, to delve deeper into the history and future of wine in this region. The Dingac and Postup regions are tiny, but inland hillsides are being planted to vine. Where will the region be ten years from now?

One Good Bottle: A Brainy Rose to Send Out Summer

Let's face it: A lot of rose wines are created for the light, casual eating of summer rather than the more serious gourmandism of other seasons. If these roses were people they would be Paris Hilton or one of her sidekicks--entertaining maybe, but ultimately not much going on in there. Many have a flavor of strawberry bubblegum, and should be served cold and refreshing. But there are serious roses, more like Dame Judi Dench, who has the range to appear (magnificently) in Pride and Prejudice AND the latest James Bond flick. This Rioja rose is one of those.

Here I need to confess a personal preference. Lopez de Heredia's wines are some of my favorites. I like the integrity of this producer, which has been in business since 1877, is still family owned and operated, is practicing organic, and releases its wines only after years in cask and years of bottle aging--when the wine is ready to be consumed. These wines are not crafted with Parker scores in mind; they're made pretty much the way they have been since 1877, in a style that may seem unmodern to the hi-tech palate. In other words, you might not like them. If you want to try an uncommon style of rose, though, or if you're interested in how a wine tastes after aging, look for a bottle of R. Lopez de Heredia "Vina Tondonia" Rioja Rose. The current vintage is 1997.

The first thing to notice about this rose is the vintage--ten years ago. Unlike most roses, which are dated one or two years ago, this one was aged for four years in barrels, then another five or so in bottles. With all that costly time and attention behind it, it seems amazing that this wine is only $23. Even from the first sniff, you can find the signs of age: a nutty, roasted almond aroma a bit like that of sherry. The aroma of rosehips (or think of dried rose petals) carries through to the palate, where there's also a note of bitter greens, such as kale, and unripe raspberry. The finish is creamy, and the roasted almond flavor lingers. It is a sophisticated wine that should be an option all year round, rather than making a guest appearance only in summer, like most roses.

It is made from three of the standard Rioja grapes: tempranillo, garnacha (grenache), and viura. There are other Rioja roses out there, but this one is not just for picnic food. I drank it with a layered salad of heirloom tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, and ribbons of basil, and it also matched beautifully with the earthiness of dry-sauteed Belgian white carrots from the farmer's market, with some oil-cured black olives thrown in. Herb-roasted chicken was also nice, but a sweet barbecue sauce would overwhelm the wine's subtle nuttiness. Or, try it with the recipe for Whole Wheat Spaghetti with Chard, Cannellini Beans, and Broiled Grape Tomatoes that can be found on the excellent food blog www.avenuefood.com. This wine will shine at a grown-up Labor Day lunch, and continue on into autumn, holding its own with late-season market vegetables and poultry.

The details
Producer: R. Lopez de Heredia
Location: Rioja region of Spain
Wine: Vina Tondonia Rioja Rosado
Vintage: 1997
Price: $23
Source: New Yorkers can pick this up at Astor Wines or at Crush on 57th Street. Non-New Yorkers, call the importer to find out who carries the wine in your area (Polaner Selections, 914-244-0505).