Cracking Croatian Wine: Zagreb & Slavonia

Hello, hello, hello! I'm Matthew Horky. And I'm Shirin Tan. Together we are Exotic Wine Travel. We've spent the last three years traveling around the world writing and speaking about unique and exciting wines. Our journey has taken us to both lesser-known and established wine regions. In 2016, we came to Croatia for the first time. We fell in love with the country and the wines, prompting us to write the book Cracking Croatian Wine, a Visitor-Friendly Guide. Now we're at it again. We're going to re-tour the country and bring our book to life. We aim to take you deep into the Croatian food and wine scene. So sit back, relax, and join us as we go Cracking Croatian Wine! If you're planning on visiting Slavonia, chances are that you'll have to come through Zagreb. The Tresnjafka market isn't as scenic as the Dolac market, but it's a lot less touristy. We're here to pick up our favorite burek from Burek Mira. When we stay in Zagreb, we frequent this stand. Burek is the favorite snack in this part of the world. It consists of a phyllo dough wrapped around cheese, meat, or fruit, baked to perfection. It's usually baked to do a pie shape and then cut into slices. The cheese version from Burek Mira is our favorite. So good. Everything is perfect about this burek. Look, funny wiggles. Our favorite place for coffee in Zagreb is across the street. Tenio Coffee is owned by a half-German, half-Croat named Christian. They're one of the few shops in Zagreb that do a French press and cold brew coffee. We need the caffeine because tonight we're going to have a food marathon. We're eating at Dubrovkin Put, one of the top restaurants in the country. The restaurant also happens to have one of the best wine lists in Croatia. Dubrovkin Put sits in a quiet location above downtown Zagreb. We've been here several times and always walk away impressed. Tijomir Perisic is the head sommelier and tonight he's arranged a 12-course meal for us paired with wine. Let's get this party started. Croatian crepe, mixed with homemade mayonnaise and the herbs. This is cuttlefish chips. Herring is really superb. It's strange because initially I like this sauvignon blanc because it's kind of green up but not really all into this botanical, high aromatic kind of sauvignon blanc. It brings out the asparagus in the wine and it gives it an extended lovely long finish to the wine. Our server Valentino keeps the courses coming while Tijomir explains a little of his philosophy when it comes to guests. To pour foreign wines to our people and Croatian wines to visitors. The deep fried scampi paired with an orange wine called Superslav from our friend Prunoslav Sintaki shows strong. This is a super pairing because it really gives a mainframe, a big-knit palette to the wine. And I was afraid that it's going to be a little bit of this bitter finish because of the celery in the dish. None at all. It finishes really clean, fresh. It's like tasting green peas straight out from the blender. Then the risotto comes. Love a good Maserata Malvasia. Savory. This is the best traditional squid ink risotto that I've had in Croatia. Monkfish. It's prepared in the olive oil. In the top is pankchoi, Jerusalem artichokes cream, I like it when they're able to take such a simple, neutral flavored ingredient but they do it so well. They show cooking technique in the final product and they give a twist of flavor to it. It's late and the place is hopping but we still have more to eat. Young potato prepared in the duck fat. What kind of pig you said it is again? Bear. Look at this glistening white bear. What do you think about the pig? Healthy pig. Healthy free-range pig. Timira has put together quite the wine list, complete with a big selection of champagne and other goodies from inside and outside Croatia. I can't stop eating this dessert. A little mac van de jure, pepper cheese and we are stuffed to the gills. In the morning we make the two-hour drive east to Slavonia. Most wine geeks know about Slavonian oak. Many don't realize that Slavonia is actually a wine region in Croatia with a long history of wine production. The Cistercian monks established a cellar in Kutievo during the 13th century. It still produces wine today. Grasovina also known as Velsriesling or Italian Riesling is the main grape in Kutievo. There's even a Grasovina square in the center of town. We're here to visit a friend and a fabulous small producer called Suntaki. Krunoslav Suntaki and his brother Anton run a small guest house and winery located on Grasovina square. We've been here before but this is the first time that we're visiting Krunoslav's vineyards. Suntaki does produce a juicy white from Grasovina but Krunoslav has made waves with his reds from Cabernet Franc and Pinot Noir. Kutievo is recognized by French monks at 13th century so they know what they are doing and the tradition goes back 800 years ago. I like Cabernet Franc in the vineyard because I can grow it fully organically every season, every vintage. I think it found its home here in Slavonia. It's about Slavonia and Kutievo and nothing special about me. We return to the cellar and get ready for dinner. This is the Portuguese 2007. Really? Yes. The Suntaki guest house is one of the few accommodation options in Kutievo. It's even mentioned in Fodor's Guide to Croatia. Tonight Anton is cooking us up a feast from Slavonian pork. Krunoslav cracks open an older bottle of this popular Pinot Noir for dinner. It's a hard to find bottling that's a huge hit amongst the Croat wine crowd. Pork back. And this is pork sausage. All local from this area. Everything is local. Tonight we're also tasting older vintages of the Suntaki Gracevina which takes Shireen by surprise. What do you think? It's really good. It has this nice gasoline smell and then you get the varietal sliced almond kind of smell on the nose as well. Because of the age it gains a little bit of shoulder and weight and broadness. Yeah it's very enjoyable. To me it's still fresh wine. Fresh wine style. Lighter style but with a lot of complexity. That is why Gracevina is a national variety. In Tafes here we get wine like this. Say hi. Breakfast is one of the best things about staying at Suntaki Guesthouse. In the morning we find fresh preserved meat called kulin at our table. It's spicy and goes great with the other local produce in addition to freshly baked cookies. After breakfast we head to Aningi Winery. Mr. Ivan Aningi was the first to privately bottle wine in Croatia. Because of the quality of his wines Mr. Aningi had his own label during the socialist period of Yugoslavia when private wineries were not legal. Ivan is over 80 years old but still does most of the work in the cellar and the vineyard. He only has a few people helping him produce wine from over 50 hectares of vineyards which are certified organic. He usually doesn't do wine visits with guests so we're soaking up the opportunity to taste tank and barrel samples with him. Ivan designed the cellar himself which holds barrels for his top wines named Venje. Both the Venje white and Venje red are blends of five different grapes. After more tank sample tasting Ivan warms up to us and invites us inside to taste a few archive wines. First up is a Riesling. It's beautiful and next is Mr. Aningi's first Venje white from 1998. It won the best of show regional trophy at the decanter world wine awards in 2008. This was perhaps the first Croatian wine in the modern era to receive such high recognition and it's still showing well today. There's a reason that the Circassian monks decided to plant vines here. Slavonia especially the areas around Kutievo is fantastic for all types of agriculture. All this potential isn't fully realized. It remains one of the poorest areas in Croatia. Some say that as much as a busload of people leave Slavonia every day. A few of the wineries are working on creating jobs in hopes to keep young people in the region. One of these producers is Krauthacher who has 45 full-time employees. Vlado Krauthacher was a winemaker at Kutievo cellars before leaving in the 90s to start his own project. He started with less than a hectare of vineyards and today produces over 600,000 bottles of wine per year. The name Krauthacher has become a stamp of high quality in Croatia. It's Sunday when we arrive but Vlado's daughter Martina and her husband Ivan are kind enough to open the cellar and tasting room which boasts beautiful views over Kutievo. Krauthacher became famous by producing Graševina and they bottle several different wines from the including their top example from the Mitrovac vineyard. These days Martina has taken over the winemaking duties from her father but he still has his stamp on the winery including the Kuvlake wine. They are orange wines inspired by Vlado's trip to the country of Georgia a few years ago. The latest vintage of Graševina just won a gold medal at the World Wine Awards. Martina and Ivan keep the wines flowing. Krauthacher may have started out producing white wines but they make outstanding reds and sweet wines too. We're especially fond of the Syrah in addition to their Merks a blend of Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon. We visited Krauthacher before and every time it seems like we taste over 30 wines and all are of high quality. When you see a Krauthacher wine on the shelf you can be assured of good wine inside the bottle. Kutievo cellars has the largest vineyard holdings in Slavonia. Their cellar was set up by the monks in the 13th century. Their Graševina bottling is always of high quality. There are a number of other notable producers in the area including Ajic, Perak, Ferovino and Orhovica. Today we don't have the time to visit them all. We're stopping at one of the newest projects in the region. Businessman Josip Galic has just finished his brand new winery across the street from Kutievo cellars. It's a modern sleek facility designed to bring jobs and tourists back to Slavonia. We think the interior looks like a spaceship. The building is a four million euro investment and half of that went into the winemaking equipment. You won't find many facilities like this in Croatia. Galic produces squeaky clean wines from Graševina and other international varieties. Shireen is fond of the two new sparkly wines that are set to be released later this year. I think both wines they have very good balance, good dosage, good acidity, nice fruit ripeness, flavours. The bubbles are quite vigorous and persistent. I mean we didn't taste it for a long time but in the mouth it's quite vigorous and I like that because the bubbles are fine. It gives a certain lightness to this wine. It has marked all the points that a good champagne is about or good sparkling is about. The structure, the lightness, the persistence, the energy in the mouth and most importantly balance, balance, balance. Every time we come to Slavonia the trip is too short. Now we have to move on to the Croatian uplands. In the next episode we move more than 100 kilometers up north of Zagreb and visit the continental part of the country. Here you will find several organic wine producers and an award-winning ice wine producer. In this episode we also visit a wellness spa resort and spotlight excellent places to wine and dine. It's really good. If you would like to learn more about Croatia and Croatian wine, keep a lookout for our next episode and check out our book Cracking Croatian Wine.