Luka Krajančić reciting one of his own poems.

These images were captured during our visit to the Island of Korčula this past summer. What was originally a tasting appointment with Pošip specialist Luka Krajančić turned into one of the greatest experiences of wine I have ever had. We met Luka at his tightly packed but spotless winery in the tiny coastal village where he lives. This was the first time I had met Luka. He is a big man but also very gentle, even shy. When we arrived a couple was already there tasting. One was a photographer without a camera and the other a young restaurateur who had just moved to the island. Our new friends were happy to start the tasting over.          The range of Krajančić's Pošip redefined the varietal to me. They were the deepest, most powerful and yet most elegant examples I had tasted. Each one was different, but always reflective of the site, the vintage and Luka's perspective. At the end he pulled out a sample of a 1 barrel production from an old patch of red Plavac vines, very rare on this white wine dominated island. It was inky, thick, explosively aromatic and deliciously savory and sweet. Though he produces no red wine commercially he clearly could. As the tasting winded down he casually asked if we could join them for lunch at his little beach house.          We grabbed bread, a case of Pošip and made our way to what turned out to be a beach so beautiful I thought I might pop like a bubble. It was a lazy little building set among craggy rocks and pine trees the porch we ate on looked out on a bay of electric blue sea. There we ate local shrimp and sardines packed in local olive oil with local vegetables and just baked bread. We talked wine, philosophy, art, sex, listened to some of Luka's heartfelt poetry and even made a poem with him. We swam, basked in the sun, drank our fills of his Pošip and laughed our asses off. It was a day of dreams that I will relive every time I open up a bottle of his delicious Pošip or set eyes on a sea of electric blue.          We are very excited that almost one year later Intrada, Luka ‘s premium Pošip is on its way to the U.S. It should be here shortly by the end of May.

Approaching Korčula by Ferry.

After gazing longingly for two days at the picturesque walled town of Korčula 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 Korčula 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, Korčula 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 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. Pošip Cooperative     From Korčula, we drive inland and meet enologist Janko Jovanov at the side of the road overlooking Čara (“char-a”). Čara is both a town and a designated wine region on Korčula. We look down into a narrow valley and see an industrial-looking winery and some 130 grape-growing plots. This is the cooperative producer P.Z. Pošip, which makes about 500,000 bottles a year. The grape plots (growing the indigenous pošip 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 Pošip, 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 Korčula, 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 Korčulans after phylloxera wiped out grape growing on the island, with the result that there are now communities of Korčulans as far away as Australia and Brazil. The pošip grape was once the predominant white variety in the general area. Now it’s almost exclusively grown on Korčula, although it is being planted on the islands of Brač and Hvar in an effort to regain its prominence as a quality white grape.Still, Janko says it is difficult to get reliable pošip 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 pošip 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 Korčula 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. Pošip, of which only the Marko Polo is available in the States.     RUKATAC 2005 is a regional wine labeled “Korčula Wine Region,” made from the marastina grape local to Korčula 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.     POŠIP ČARA 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 POŠIP 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.)     Later, sitting at the hotel with Boris, Marija, and Anita, we talk about the experimentation underway in the Pelješac. 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 Pelješac, 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.

Over a summer, two travelers drink their way through the wines of Mediterranean Europe          One of the last wineries we visited on the island of Korčula was that of Stpian Cebalo in Lumbarda. This is on the far southeast side of the island and is a place where tourists usually just go for the beaches. But it is here where Stipan has two hectares of land and is one of the few producers of the white wine, Grk. The man knows what he is doing and has a family tradition of wine making that dates back an amazing 500 years!     Grk is a well-balanced white that doesn't really push you one way or the other, but makes for pleasant drinking and is considerably different from Pošip, the other main white of Korčula. His 2005 'vrhunsko' or high quality Grk has nice fruit aromas to the top and bottom of the nose. It is a bit dry, but not terribly so and has a nice finish. Stipan does not age this in oak at all and told us that he preferred not to have the oaky aromas to the wine, which seemed to be a good plan to us in the end as they would most likely muddy things up. We also tried his Plavac which has a touch of cinnamon to the nose which makes it a bit different than the other Plavacs we've tasted previously. It is 13% alcohol and that makes it rather strong for this region, yet it has a light body to it, making for easy drinking. The finish had some sweet, dry bread textures that were also quite pleasant.     Producing 6,000 liters a year certainly doesn't make Cebalo one of the heavy-hitters of Korčula like Čara or Blato, but he is making good wines in his little spot on the island, on his terms, from just his grapes.

Over a summer, two travelers drink their way through the wines of Mediterranean Europe          Two more of the smaller producers on Korčula are Bleuš and Kunjašić. They are both located around Smokvica and like many wine makers of this size, very tricky to find. You see, their cellars look just like any other house on the street and it's not until you go inside that you see a whole wine making operation spread out from behind the old doors. It also makes it impossible to just drop by for a tasting or a visit, since you need to know someone who knows someone to call them and actually meet you as was the case when we went to Bleuš. But, they will always make it worth the hunt by rewarding you with good wines and great hospitality.     Bleuš is a tricky name, since it really is the Stanojević Family that produces the wine now. Well, actually, it still is the Bleuš family (which they believe is really of French origins), but there were just two daughters to inherit the winery after their father passed away and it still is the custom for it to be the man's family name on the wine, even if it wasn't his family that originally produced it. But, this is changing as you'll see Stanojević Family on the bottle, but with a Bleuš title. A tad bit confusing, but such are the customs and the cultural changes that are slowly happening.     We tasted the 2006 Pošip from Bleuš. It had spent seven months aging in stainless steel and had light cherry aromas to the nose along with a bit of peach and apricot. Overall, there was an abundance of spring aromas blossoming out of it and it opens up quite a bit as it breaths. The body is dry with considerably lighter tones to it that pass in to the finish of the wine.     When it came time to visit Kunjašić, that proved even more difficult as we always seemed to catch him while he was out in the field and much like Bleuš, he was one of those wine growers that you had to be shown exactly where his cellar was in order to find it. Kunjašić produces a number of other wines that we were not able to taste, which in the end left us thinking to the next time we visit, because there is always a next time in Croatia. But thankfully, local pride was our friend and we were able to taste his 2005 Pošip at a restaurant in Korčula Grad. It opened up like most of the Pošips on the island, but had a bit more fruit, placing it somewhere between what Bleuš does and what Čara does.     It will be interesting to watch how both of these wineries progress, especially Bleuš, seeing as how this is their very first vintage.

Over a summer, two travelers drink their way through the wines of Mediterranean Europe          When it comes to former Communist cooperatives on Korčula that transitioned in to successful private companies, there are none bigger than Blato 1902. Named after the town that they are located in, Blato produces a massive 1,000,000 liters a year and even has the capacity to produce more. But, they don't make only wine. The produce rakija, aniseta, travarica, smokovača, rogačica, and komovica, as well as olive oil and vinegar. All told, there are about 30 wines and products that they make. Not bad for a company that was started by the local wine growers of the area in 1902.     It was a little tricky to find, being that the main building is located behind a school of all things. Once we found it, our attempts at speaking Croatian with the employees was helped up and greatly improved upon by Sanja Protić and Ante Šeparović (one of the enologists) who spoke English and gave us the history and a tasting. We tried the 2005 Korčulanka which is at 12.5% alcohol and has a light fruit to the nose. This carries in to the body makes the wine easy and pleasing to drink. While not mind-blowing, it's a pleasant wine that would go well with fish, chicken, and other light meats. Then we tried the 2005 Plavac Blato, which is 12.6% alcohol. It is also a solid wine that is very easy to drink. There is a basic Plavac Mali nose to it and a typical dry body. Much like the Korčulanka, it's a basic wine, but also a good wine for meals.     The one wine that we didn't get to try, but really wanted to was the Cetinka. It's a native varietal to Korčula, Vis, and Lastovo, so you'll only find it on the islands of Croatia. The described it as light, fresh, with a slightly acidic middle to it. Maybe we'll see it further on in our trips, or maybe just the next time we're in Croatia...

Over a summer, two travelers drink their way through the wines of Mediterranean Europe          Like most single-owner Croatian wineries, the story of Toreta on Korčula is all about a family history of wine making that stopped during Communism and is now working to produce again. In this case, the man who has taken up the helm is the very young Frano Banicević, who, at 25 has begun to run the winery that his great-grandfather built at the turn of the 20th century. Like most of the new generation in Croatia that are taking over from their parents or grandparents, they are full of ideas and ways to get their wines more well-known. One of the biggest examples of this is that fact that there are actually signs to the Toreta winery and it is quite easy to find in Smokvica. Others are a little more subtle like a gradual change in the design of the bottle labels. While seen as something of a waste by the older generations, Frano is keenly aware of how much it affects the decision of the consumer.     The one thing that really doesn't change is the commitment to producing good wines. We tried two of their vintages in the tasting room that they have in 'downtown' Smokvica. By the way, 'smokva' is the Croatian word for fig and the region was apparently covered in them prior to massive wine cultivation. There still are some being grown and if you get the chance to try a fig jam from Dalmatia, do so as they're some of the best in the world, but I deliciously digress.     Toreta's 2005 Pošip at 13.9% alcohol is aged in Slavonian Oak. It starts out with a lovely, sweet nose that has aromatic touches of honey, apple, and a bit of pear. The body is full and surprisingly heavy, in that a great bit of the nose gets lost in it, but many of the tones come through regardless, all the way to a bit of lemon on the finish.     The Toreta is a 12.5% alcohol Plavac that is only classified as 'stolno' or table wine. Frano warned me about it not being that amazing before I tasted it, but I think he really sells the wine far too short, as it is actually quite good. While not a Dingač, it still retains a few of the elements in the nose. The body drops all of this and is quite light, but the high acidity you can taste in the wine speaks to me that it would pair extremely well with most any dish.     Visiting Toreta was a very pleasing experience overall to see how the younger generation of Korčula is slowly gaining the reigns from the older generation and doing it with what appears to be relative ease.

Over a summer, two travelers drink their way through the wines of Mediterranean Europe          Built in 1983, the company that is now Pošip Čara on the island of Korčula, started as one of the Yugoslavian wine making collectives. All of the grapes from the surrounding area in the town of Čara fed in to this one factory to produce the wines of which 90% were whites. There were 100 hectares of land which over time became dedicated to the production of Pošip. In standard Communist thinking, this centralized production made sense as there were plenty of areas that produced reds, so why not focus this region on just whites as they grew extremely well there? Well, the result of this today is that the region is still primarily growing only whites and while there are a few private growers in the region, the now privately owned Pošip Čara still dominates production with 300,000 bottles a year leaving their doors.     This is all done with a scant 10 people on staff, of which, one is Toni Tomić who was actually a mechanic, showing us around as he spoke the best English. But, even though he worked on the equipment that made the wine, he knew a considerable amount about the wines and the history of the company. Later we found out that he is one of the people who has been with the company since the first day they started to produce.     The most likely reason for Pošip Čara's success is that they focus on just a few wines. They have a little bit of table Plavac that they produce, but the real meat is in the Pošip. We tasted the 2006 varietal which was pleasant and much like most standard Pošip wines. There are some nice fruit aromas, but it has a bit of a Sauvignon Blanc finish to it. But, it did work as a good entry point for the Marko Polo, which is their flagship wine and what a wine it is with a honeysuckle and flowery nose that leads in a body full of strong fruits. Amazingly, neither of wines are aged in oak. They reserve that for a mere 200 liters that no matter how much we begged, we were not able to get at. We assume that they are also not available for sale as they are undoubtedly quite remarkable.     In a sharp contrast to Pošip Čara is Jedinstvo PZ which is a bit down the road outside of Smokvica. They were also a collective, but started earlier in 1954. Their privatization went much differently and they focused on producing a greater number of wines, but at a much lower rating level that ranges from wines you buy by the liter to low-end 'quality' level wines that are mostly suitable for drinking with a meal.     It is interesting to see how these two wine making companies with similar roots in such a small area have diverged so much in the tastes of wines that they produce. But, if you're a white wine lover and haven't tried Pošip yet, we highly recommend Pošip Čara.