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The Wine Century Club celebrates its 4th anniversary this week. Becoming an honorary member of the exlusive Wine Century Club is easy and fun. This funky club has no membership fees, no monthly wine shipments, and no entry exams. The only requirement is that you'll have to taste wines made from at least 100 different grape varietals.
    We help you to achieve this lofty goal. In our wine-web shop we offer more than three dozen different varietals, many you have never heard of and much less tasted before. Be adventurous and have some fun:
Try something new today!
    Auxerrois - Babich - Bena - Blatina - Blaufrankisch - Bouvier - Cabernet Franc - Cabernet Sauvignon - Chardonnay - Cserszegi Fuszeres - Debejan - Debit - Frankovka - Furmint - Gamay - Gewurztraminer - Grasevina - Gruner Veltliner - Irsai Oliver - Harslevelu - Kadarka - Kekfrankos - Kerner - Kiralyleanyka - Krkosija - Krstac - Lasin - Malvasia - Marastina - Merlot - Muskat Lunel - Muskat Ottonel - Olaszrizling - Pinela - Pinot Blanc - Pinot Gris - Pinot Noir - Plavac Mali - Plavina - Posip - Refosk - Riesling - Rotgipfler - Rumeni Plavec - Saemling - Sansigot - Sauvignon Blanc - Shiraz - St. Laurent - Vranac - Welschriesling - Yellow Muscat - Zametovka - Zelen - Zierfandler - Zilavka - Zlahtina - Zweigelt

There is a great deal of truth in the saying that "good things come to those who wait". About two years ago, I discovered what a great wealth of wine was on offer in the Herzegovina region of Bosnia & Herzegovina. Unfortunately, beyond what I could pack in to my suitcase for the flight home, I was unable to taste it since.     This has all changed now that the wines of Vinarija Čitluk are available to be purchased here in the U.S. And from our travels in 2007 you can read all about a visit to Čitluk here.     The best part in all of this is that Blue Danube Wine Co. was able to get a hold of most everything Čitluk produces, thus providing a great taste across the core varietals of Herzegovina. This includes several of the white Žilavkas, several of the red Blatinas, and even some Vranacs which people will find is a bit different than what is being made across the border in Montenegro. For those looking to try a bit of everything, there are the Premium Mostar and Value Herzegovina Six-Pack Samplers as well.     Finally, if you want to read more about the region as a whole, take a look at the wine guide I wrote, Vinologue: Dalmatia Herzegovina.

IntoWine is a nice, review show for wine that is based in San Francisco. They have a good tendency to pick different wines for review on the web-based episodes. This naturally means that they pick up on a Croatian wine here and there.     Recently they reviewed the 2006 Bibich Riserva. It's a wine that I personally love and was happy to see it get some good press. The reviewers all gave it favorable marks. For some reason, they picked up on the oak of the wine a great deal, which is surprising as I've never found it all that oaky, but hey, they're professionals, so maybe there's a nuance I've been missing or I need to have a glass of the 2006 again. You can also try it for yourself to see what you think.     It should be noted that in what Broadbent said, the third grape in the wine actually isn't Bibich, but Babich. It's a small detail, but the first is Alen Bibich's family/winery name and the later is a common varietal grown in the Northern Dalmatia region.     

Having visited Pfneiszl last year, I've been intrigued by the wines that Birgit and her sister Katrin have been making.     In preparing for her career as a winemaker, Birgit literally traveled around the world to learn about winemaking in Italy, California, Argentina, Chile, and New Zealand. The result of this was an interest in trying out the various wines from these regions in their vineyards in Hungary. These few vines were just starting to produce last year and they had they have had their first proper harvest of them.     The end result is the távoli világ, a wine that is a blend of Shiraz, Carmenére, Malbec, Zinfandel, and Sangiovese. Definitely a wild blend (that I hope I never have to pronounce in front of a Hungarian), but one that is done quite delicately reflecting the fact that Birgit learned these grapes well in her travels. It's quite subtle at first, but then opens up with mint and watercress in a decently mineral nose. That watercress then turns in to a peppery, enjoyably spicy body that is light and fresh with the slightest tinges of strawberry and much more prevalent dark chocolate flavors. Raspberry also comes out after some decent breathing. On there finish there is a slight effervescence which is also in the nose when first opened.     An interesting wine that, due to the small amount of vines is not a large production, which is shown in the 500ml bottles and the fact it's most likely not going to be available outside of Hungary and Austria.

It was just a bit over a year and a half ago that I first visited the new (at the time) winery of La Vinyeta. What a difference 20 months makes. For starters, they now have their website fully up and running which does a great job of showing the design aesthetic that goes in to the look of all things Vinyeta, which are created by the winemaker's brother. It was a bit hard to convey that in 2007 as the winery wasn't finished and they only had a couple of releases. The winery is indeed done now and open for visits most of the week, although they generally follow the sun, meaning that winter hours are shorter and summer hours, longer. Visiting in the winter probably isn't allowing this region of Catalonia to be all that it can be. Upon getting out of the car, it was like getting clocked by a sack of ice cubes as the Tramuntana wind ripped through every layer I had on, freezing me to the core until I got inside the winery.     But beyond all these superficial changes, there is the fact that the wines have matured and not just in aging; they're massively more complex and I would say demanding a great deal of respect now. While winemaker Josep Serra Pla is youngish at 31 and it would seem that he is steadying his hand with his craft, it's actually the material available that has changed the wines more than anything else. In my prior visit, he still wasn't harvesting from Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah, and Merlot vineyards. This means that the Heus Negre was good in 2007, but not outstanding. This has solidly changed. The addition of blending the grapes from his new vineyards has made this wine delectable. With a blending of 27% Syrah, 26% Merlot, 25% Samsó, and 22% Garnatxa, the Garnatxa is not as pronounced now and it's creating a more round wine with chocolate touches to it, as well as bold, unwavering depth to the body. The best part is that it's still high enough in tannins to be great with food and only €6. If I ever live in the region, I think I know what my daily drinker is going to be.     But there are more wines to his lineup now and what's great is that they just build upon each other. The Llavors (pron. Lya-bors) takes off from the Heus and presents an even stronger wine, albeit still smooth. Comprised of 55% Cabernet Sauvignon, 25% Samsó and 12% Merlot and 8% Garnatxa, it spends five months in an oak regimen of French, Hungarian, and Romanian barrels. It is firm in the mouth with touches of boysenberry and strawberry, yet it pulls back enough to still be had with foods.     The Puntiapart, with it's very clever boxes you can see here, is the boldest of all the reds that Josep is making. This blend of 53% Cabernet Sauvignon, 24% Samsó, 23% Merlot makes for a strong wine, yet oddly enough, it's the smoothest of the lot. It goes through a grueling, slaving, absolutely treacherous 13 months of lying in the oak to reach the point where you get what you taste from the bottle; a delicately balanced wine with a great deal of substance to the body. It is at once both mineraly and tannic, but not harshly so. While I feel it would be best enjoyed on its own, it would pare with with a nice grilled lamb or pretty much any grilled meat with a lot of character that would pick up the notes of the wine. Chicken need not apply, although the Heus could get cozy with the bird.     Lastly of course, there is a sweet Garnatxa, because in Catalonia, you're just not officially a winery until you're producing a sweet wine, or so I think. The Sols is an equal blend of red and white Garnatxa from the 75 year old vines that Josep has. And while I'm usually always a Moscatell man when it comes to Catalan sweets, if you put up a bottle of Moscatell and a bottle of this Sols and made me choose just one, I would be very, very unhappy. It's a mighty fine sweet. It's aromatically nutty in the glass and has a pleasant, lingering sweetness, that sticks in the mouth after the swallow and slowly slips away as the perfect close to a meal.     Ah, let's not also forget that La Vinyeta is also putting out an olive oil, which is just as natural a progression for a winery as producing a sweet. It's all from locally grown olives in the Empordà area. Yes, it's aromatically fantastic and of course it tastes great. Toss in a little jamón with some pa amb tomàquet and you've really got yourself the quintessentially perfect Catalan meal.

Last Saturday, CAV hosted a tasting of Slovenian wines. Naturally, such a tasting wouldn't be proper without Frank Dietrich from Blue Danube Wine and Emil Gaspari from Slovenian Premium Wines in attendance to point out the various facets of the extremely long list of wines. In case you missed it, stay up to date at the News & Events section on this site as well as my twits that I write about wines and events in San Francisco.     And what it list it was, drifting from whites to reds, to desserts. It showed that not only is Emil able to somehow talk these very small producers in to exporting, but also that Slovenia is really producing a great wealth of wines these days. Starting with such wines as the Guerila Pinela those in attendance wandered in to the Batič Cabernet Franc and Batič Rosso 2005 (which I hadn't tasted previously, but found to be one of my new favorite vintages). Then it was off to the bolder reds such as Santomas Big Red and Santomas Antonius to experience the great, full-bodied Refošk that the Slovenes on the coast are producing. Closing all of this was a taste of the Batič Valentino which is a delightful, nutty dessert wine.     It looked to me that all in attendance were really enjoying exploring these wines. And while this was merely a week long tasting stretch, the good news is that CAV regularly stocks these wines as well as a great number of Croatian wines to enjoy anytime. While it can get a big packed in the evening due to popularity, CAV is a good place to check out anytime, since they always put together interesting wine lists.

These days wine blogs are almost passé, Twitter is on the go, Wine TV is in, and social wine sites mushroom. Witness the many new entries in this field. I was made aware of yet another social site called IntoWine.com with a wine tasting TV section build in when its founder Brad Prescott contacted us. He was planning to produce a future segment on "Wines from Strange Places". Well, that sounded a little better than the usual "Weird Wines of the World" so we complied and offered a selection of our wines from Austria, Hungary, Slovenia, and Croatia to be put through the ringer by an illustrious tasting panel at an equally illustrious place, namely the Incanto Restaurant in San Francisco.          The first episode from this shooting has been posted and you can watch it here. It features a wine made by one of my favorite Slovenian producers, master vintner Franci Cvetko of the Kogl estate in the North-Eastern Podravje wine region. It's a Saemling (AKA Scheurebe) mainly found in Germany in a fruity style and sometimes in Austria as a dessert wine. In the hands of Franci Cvetko it joins his Mea Culpa line-up of elegant dry white wines with a rather filigrane (filigree) structure and subtle flinty fruit.

Cantallops, Spain. The name for English speakers might sound like, "cantaloupes", but it couldn't be further from that in meaning. If you take it at face value, in Catalan it means, "singing at wolves". But it appears if you dig a bit deeper that the name has an old Latin root to it that means something more along the line of "wolves' rock" which makes much more sense given that the town is built on a massive rock outcropping and they had a big problem with wolves up until the 19th century.     Probably the best thing about this small hamlet sitting on the edge of Pyrenees is that they have two (count 'em) two wineries. One is Masia Serra, which it seems only has its information on the Empordà wines website. It's a gorgeous place, but not often open, which makes it hard to judge the wines as getting a tasting is tricky.     The other winery is Vinyes dels Aspres. Now, this is a winery that we actually encountered back in 2007 at a Spanish wine show in San Francisco. I can't say enough good things about this winery. For starters, the owner, David Molas Albertí is a very enthusiastic guy. He's restarted his family's winery after decades of their not producing wine. With the exception of picking the grape harvest, he does everything himself. He bottles, ages, and sells about 40,000 bottles of wine a year.     With all this exuberance, he is producing some incredibly top quality wines. This is the only winery I've ever found a White Garnatxa. The red version is everywhere in Catalonia, but no one seems to want to make a white wine of it, possibly due to price disparity with the red fetching more than the white. This is a serious error as in white form it is simply unlike any white that I've ever tasted before. Minerally yes, but with a strong, succulent body and light sweetness to it, that makes it great for both white and red drinkers alike. At €12, it's more expensive than the vast majority of wines in the area, but oh, oh so worth it.     There is also a young wine that he makes, which was unfortunately a 2008. I say unfortunately because he says (and I completely agree) that it shouldn't have been released so early. He did so because he sold out of the 2007 long before the holiday season as it was his most reasonable wine at €5.50. Just like in the rest of the world, there is economic crisis in Spain as well and his distributors pushed him in to releasing the 2008 before it was really ready. The problem this caused was that the nose is quite off and needs another three months or more in the bottle to develop. The body however is luscious and smooth, which makes the clumsy nose even more of a shame as many folks might be easily put off by that alone, when it is and will be a great wine.     The other standouts for me were the S'Alou, which is a high-end red made primarily of Garnatxa. It's a hearty, complex red. There is a lot of strawberry in the nose once it opens up properly and the oak in the body is subtle without really being overpowering, yet at the same time strong enough to be appreciated. At €23, it's getting rather pricey for the region, but is a wine that is very much worth every euro.     But the #1 wine that David is producing is the Bac de les Ginesteres. It's a sweet wine make from the raisin grapes late in the harvest. If left to age normally, these Garnatxa raisins would produce a sweet wine just like the lower cost Negre de Panses. But, to punch it up another notch, David places the wine in large, clear glass bottles that he then ages them in the sun of all things. I thought they were a joke when I saw what you see at the top of the article, sitting outside the winery, but no, they were the newest release of the wine aging. Again, at €30, it's a decently high priced sweet wine, but it is transcendent. I have gotten a new appreciation of dessert wines in successive trips to Spain, but this wine, this creation is so above and beyond and Moscatell and Garnatxa sweets that I've had before. The wine is nutty in the glass and like the best sweet Sherries that I've ever had. It ceases to be like a normal sweet wine and reaches some other level that I don't even know what to call it. All I can say is wow. Of course with only 500 bottles a year being produced, it is not easy to come by.     If the wines didn't speak enough for the winery, David is doing other things to make it stand out. For one, there is the website which is a really nicely done site. He understands marketing, which, while something that California vintners know very well, is not something that European winemakers do that much of. He also sources all of his grapes from his own lands. He doesn't buy any grapes from outside growers, which is nearly unheard of due to it limiting your production volume. And of the grapes the he grows, Garnatxa is predominant. Every wine that he produces has Garnatxa in it. He does this because it is a local varietal and he feels a good deal of pride in growing it. He doesn't grow anything like Cabernet Sauvignon or Chardonnay because they aren't local. David wants to be a Catalan winemaker first and foremost and in this he is doing exceeding well. If Cantallops doesn't know it now, he will be their star citizen in the coming years which will replace the current star, who was a farmer that shot six wolves in one year back in 1868. I'm joking,although it might not be far from the truth...

Old Dubrovnik (or "Ragusa" as it was called in the Medieval ages) 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 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 pošip—Krajancic’s “Intrada,” possibly the best pošip 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 Pelješac—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.

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 pošip 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 U.S.)     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 Pelješac 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. 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. 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.) 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 graševina (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.

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