Niko Bura 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 Dingač 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% Dingač 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.     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.     BURA 2004 Dingač. 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. 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 Pelješac 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 Dingač and Postup regions are tiny, but inland hillsides are being planted to vine. Where will the region be ten years from now?     (The Bura Dingač 2005 is available in our wine shop.)     Text and photos by Katherine Camargo, DWS / kcamargo@verizon.net

We arrive by ferry on one end of the island of Korčula 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 Korčula in a day or two. Orebic is a waterfront town on the edge of the Pelješac peninsula, where the renowned wine producing areas of Dingač and Postup cling precariously to hillside terraces overlooking the Adriatic. In terms of prestige, Dingač 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 Pelješac, 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 Korčula, 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 Korčula 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 Korčula and send smoke-signal reports by relay to Dubrovnik. Outside the monastery is a captain’s cemetery, 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 Dingač and Postup 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 Dingač—much of the balance is in the valley, which produces table-wine grapes. The vineyards in Dingač (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.     (Also check out the wines made by the Dingač Winery in our wine shop.)          The Famous Grgić     On a promontory at the mouth of the incredibly beautiful, tiny port of Trstenik stands the Grgić winery and the home of winemaker Kresimir Vuckovic. Miljenko Grgić, a vanguard California wine maker and head of the exclusive Grgich Hills Estate in Rutherford since 1977, famously returned to his Croatian roots in the mid-90s, and opened a winery here. (Note the tiny difference in the Croatian "Grgić" and the American "Grgich" spelling of his name.) We drop in very briefly and taste:     POSIP 2005, made from grapes bought from Korčula, 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 U.S.          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 Pelješac, 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 Dingač 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 Dingač 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.     Text and photos by Katherine Camargo, DWS / kcamargo@verizon.net

Over a summer, two travelers drink their way through the wines of Mediterranean Europe          While there is a great deal of large-scale wine production going on in Potomoje on the Pelješac peninsula, there are also a number of small producers who are crafting excellent wines on their own terms. They're not easy to find and if you were to ask us where they were, we'd most likely have to point you to the first place we asked a person who knew a person who knew a person that eventually led to the homes and cellars of Kiridžija and Matković. Both of them are tucked away in homes where you'd never suspect that some fantastic wine making was taking place.     We started with Kiridžija. He has been making wine for the last 12 years, which is right in line with most of the region, as that was the time when the former Yugoslavia fell apart and they were able to start producing on their own again. In his 300 year-old home, he produces small quantities of both Plavac and Dingač. Let us reiterate that these are actually the same grape, but grown in very different regions of the peninsula. His 2004 Plavac at 12.6% alcohol retails for about $5 and has a nice, rich nose that had mint, berry, and tobacco aromas. The body was very pleasing as well with a buttery finish that really reigns in the sharp, dry tones that can be common in lesser Plavac vintages. The 2006 Dingač, with a rather hefty 16.4% alcohol, is so deep and flavorful that it is dangerous. Aged in Hungarian oak, the body is succulent and you really want to keep it on your palate as long as you can. Over the oak there also emerges some nicely subtle, sweet berry flavors.     For now, Kiridžija is enjoying his wine and exports part of his very small production to a very lucky Switzerland. As for what the future holds, that is a bit more uncertain because, like a great many wine makers in this region, he has two children who aren't going to pick up the craft and one who is too young to start, but might down the road, only time will tell. Whatever the case ends up being, we hope that these wines will continue to be made.     Then there is Petar Matković, whose family started making wine in 1536. He is from the 14th generation of wine makers! Sure, there have been some starts and stops in there due to such things as Communism, but the tradition continued regardless. Currently, they sell a great deal of their grapes to the local cooperative, but they also keep a small portion to produce 3,000 bottles of Dingač and 15,000 bottles of Plavac. Currently, they pick from 30,000 vines, but have planted some new vines in the Dingač region that they'll start harvesting soon.     We tasted the 2004 Dingač which had a great, soft nose of tobacco aromas and a smooth finish. It was a bit light on fruit aromas and flavors, which is most likely attributed to the oak flavors taking over from the six months it spent in French oak. We then also tried the 2004 Plavac which had quite a bit more fruit than the Dingač, yet had more of the deep, frothy nose that we've become accustomed to in the the Dingač. But overall, a very quiet, subtle, and easy to drink Plavac.     While they are producing rather different wines, these two producers are craftsmen and we included them in the same article, because their approach is the same: small production, based on a love of the grape.

Over a summer, two travelers drink their way through the wines of Mediterranean Europe          Pavo Miličić had a long career working on the sea. He eventually made his way up the ranks to being a captain and worked in the cruise industry for some time. Despite traveling the world, winemaking was in his blood though. Like many in the Pelješac region, his family were growing wine previous to WWII when they stopped due to the new Communist regime not allowing any private wine production.     Twenty years ago, Pavo started to try his hand at the grape again. Time passed and what started as a hobby quickly grew in to a company that produces about 300,000 bottles a year now. The production level of his winery has gotten so large that a year ago he formally quit his seafaring job to focus solely on his wines and built a new, larger facility that could produce upwards of 500,000 bottles. For all appearances, he seems to be handling the transition in stride and showed us around despite being deep in the middle of construction.     We tasted everything straight from the barrels as many of his wines are still in the process of aging for the new year. His 2006 Plavac has a very good tobacco nose with a hint of berries. You can really taste and smell the oak in it, but at the same time, it's quite deep and flavorful. The 2006 was a step deeper than the Plavac with even more tobacco and a nice smooth finish.     To close out our tastes we had both the 2004 and the 2005 Dingac. The 2004 was just about to be bottled and has aged excellently. The nose is nice and earthy. The body has undertones of chocolate and pepper to it. Pavo says that he's going to age it a bit more in the bottle and once it goes on sale, we're sure it will be a hit. The 2005 is also bound to be popular and seems to be aging itself in to a very complex wine. While it's far from being bottled, there are some lovely cinnamon and spice aromas in the nose. The body and smooth and light from start to finish and just as you're getting the last taste of it, a great tickle of pepper hits your palate. Tying all this together are smooth and luxurious butter tones that really mark the wine as a future winner.     Pavo is headed in some great directions with his wines and it will he'll be an interesting Croat to follow in the years to come.

Over a summer, two travelers drink their way through the wines of Mediterranean Europe          To distinguish themselves from their very close neighbor, the Dingač winery, Matuško has been putting two donkeys on their label to make them distinct from the one donkey that Dingač uses. The differences aren't label-deep though, as Matuško is a much smaller winery, producing 500,000 bottles a year that are sourced mainly from their own vines that are nine hectares in size.          Their winery is very friendly and set up to receive tour groups who can get a tasting of all 11 wines that they produce. Additionally, there is a downstairs tasting room with old farming implements and salutes to the donkeys that are no longer needed to carry the grapes over the mountain from the Dingač vineyards now that the Dingač Tunnel exists. We were told by our host that while we may see donkeys in the region still, they are strictly for the purposes of tourists and then their lives are much easier now.     We selected several wines for tasting from their lineup and started with the 2006 Rukatac. This is light white wine, which is also called Maraština in areas such as Konavle, further south from Pelješac. It is a bit different from the typical Maraština though in that it's a bit less fruity. The nose is still light and there is a slight 'waffle' quality to it which is quite pleasing.     While Pošip is only grown on Korčula (where Matuško sources their grapes) we decided to see what they did with those grapes. In the 2004 that we tasted, we found the nose to be more delicate than standard Pošip with a crème dessert aspect to it. The body was a bit noisier than other Pošips though and didn't have a clear makeup to it. The finish however, was quite smooth.     When starting on the reds, we tried the 2005 Plavac Mali. The wine is rather light at 12.2% alcohol, but the nose is sweet and very tasty. These characteristics carry through to the body and then the finish that despite being a very dry wine makes for a tasty, smooth finish.     Matuško, like Dingač winery, makes a Dingač wine. Theirs is quite different from the Dingač Winery one, which is a characteristic we commonly found in how different all these Dingač were based on just a slight change to their growing angle on the slope of the mountain. The 2004 vintage that we tried was very good and a very distinct wine. There were peach aromas and even a hint of tomato to the nose. Another aroma in there we couldn't really place a name on other than to say 'chutney'. But overall, everything, from the nose to the body to the finish was vastly different from other Plavac and other Dingač that we'd had. To describe this wine would really not do it justice, as every person will get a different flavor from it.          Overall, Matuško puts out a good selection of wines that are very representative of Potomje where they are located and of the Pelješac region in general.

Over a summer, two travelers drink their way through the wines of Mediterranean Europe          There is a bit of confusion surrounding the wine producer, Dingač on the Pelješac Peninsula in Croatia. The issue primarily revolves around the fact that the major wine region in Pelješac is called Dingač and that this is also the name of this company. This in by itself wouldn't be so bad except that several other winemakers in the area also make a wine which is called Dingač, because their wines are made from the high-quality grapes of this region. So, to clear this up once and for all, the wine producer, Dingač, is what's left from the cooperative that was built there in 1982 for wine production in what was then, Yugoslavia, and the one that features a donkey logo in its wine labels.          The cooperative had been actively producing wines before then, since about 1960. Today, they still function in a similar fashion wherein they buy the grapes from small, local farmers for large-scale wine production to the tune of 1.5 million liters a year. The big difference between now and before the fall of communism is that grape growers now have the choice of whether they want to sell their grapes to the cooperative or not.     In the end, this maybe doesn't clear up the confusion, since one of the wines that the Dingač company produces is also called Dingač, to differentiate it from the other wines they produce from grapes grown in their vineyards not located in the dingač region, such as their Postup or Plavac.     During our visit we tried four of their wines. There was the 2004 Plavac at 11.6% alcohol. It had a very dry body with a dry nose that had a hint of blackberry to it. Then there was the 2004 Pelješac with 11.9% alcohol. It had a similar nose to the Plavac, but the body was lighter with sharp berry tones that were a bit tart.     We then moved on to the "quality" level wines which are the mid-range wines. The 2004 Postup, made from grapes of a region to the north of Dingač, had a lovely mint and licorice nose to it, at 14.2% alcohol. There wre stronger fruits in the body, as well as a great smoothness to it. The finish was quite dry as we've found to be similar in other Postups.     We finished with their namesake, the Dingač. The 2004 has 14.1% alcohol and that extra heat to the wine goes a long way to making it a deeper wine. The nose has similar berry aromas like the other wines we tasted, but also has a good deal of tobacco. The body is very smooth and that texture pulls all the way through the taste and in to the finish. Overall, this wine has a much stronger earthiness to it than a standard Plavac (Dingač is made from Plavac grapes) and there is a leafy quality to the wine that you can both smell and taste.

Over a summer, two travelers drink their way through the wines of Mediterranean Europe          Pelješac is a 65km long peninsula in Southern Dalmatia, about an hour north of Dubrovnik, which produces some of the best wines in Croatia. The majority of them are produced from the red Plavac Mali grapes grown in a thin strip of land of only 2km in the Southwestern side of the peninsula, known as the Dingač region.          Dingač comprises the lower half of a steep mountain that runs along the sea by the village of Potomje on the other side of the mountain. For centuries, the people of Potomje and the surrounding villages had to travel on donkeys, horses or mules to tend to the vineyards in the Dingač slope, on the other side of the mountain. They also had to bring their yearly harvest by those same beasts of burden to Potomje, to crush and age the grapes. Naturally, this was a very labor intensive process, so in the early 1970's all the wine growing families in the area decided to pool their money and order the construction of a tunnel through the mountain. This tunnel, which was finished in 1973, made life a lot easier for the Dingač wine growing, although the vineyards in the region still need to be tended by hand due to the inclination and sheer ruggedness of the land.          This is an area that is always sunny, even when in Potomje, on the other side of the mountain, it's snowing as happens every couple of years, and thus it produces high quality grapes with a very deep and distinctive taste. Also, depending on the position of the vineyards on the slope, the inclination, how they face the sun or how close they are to the sea, they can produce grapes with quite a different taste in spite of literally growing next to each other.          In Peješac, everybody's family seems to have been sailors and winegrowers, and thus vineyards cover the whole peninsula. However, only a few of the winegrowers actually produce wine for sale, with most of them selling their grapes to the local cooperatives and making only a small amount for their own family and friends to consume. This is something that most families in Pelješac have been doing for centuries, until communist Yugoslavia was created and they were banned from producing wine even in small amounts for the household. With the end of Yugoslavia nearly two decades ago, wine production is quickly growing in the area again and old vineyards that withered away are coming back to life.     The biggest winery in the area is the Dingač cooperative, which currently produces half a million liters of wine a year. It produces four types of red Plavac Mali wines: Plavac, Pelješac, Postup and, of course, Dingač. Despite these all being from the same grape varietal, the plavac mali, it is only the Dingač that comes from the grapes on the other side of this half a kilometer tunnel through the mountain.