A vineyard assistant named Nevin drives us the four hours south from Krk to Split in the rain, where we slog to the catamaran that will take us to Jelsa, on the north side of Hvar island, in 90 minutes. Jelsa is a gorgeous town with a riviera look—there’s obviously plenty of money here, at least in tourist season.     We’re on Hvar to visit the single winery in all of Croatia, called Zlatan Otok, that produces a Grand Cru wine. Zlatan Plenkovic, the owner, is not available to us, but his son Marin (who is finishing his studies to take up a position at the winery) takes good care of us for the twenty-odd hours we’re here. He drives us from Jelsa over the top of the island to the south side, where the winery is, via a single-lane tunnel with rough rock walls carved through the mountaintop. Marin pauses about 100 meters into the tunnel and points to a room off to the side where stainless-steel tanks are visible through the doorway—they store some of their white wine here without need for refrigeration (because of the cold rock). When they need the wine, they simply pump it out through hoses connected to a tank truck parked outside the tunnel. Come to think of it, those tanks must have been constructed inside the rock room, as they wouldn’t fit through the door!     The roadway is precipitous, with switchback curves and not a guardrail in sight. At one point we encounter a Range Rover (what folly!) that has to back up so we don’t slip off the one-and-a-half-lane road, onto the roof of a house, trying to pass it. We have a brief tour of the winery, then settle at the family house and pension lodgings three minutes away. The family is building a small tourist empire here, in this quiet, rural town Sveta Nedjelja which is isolated by the mountain looming above and by the lack of a direct road from here to fashionable Hvar city down the coast. In addition to the pension, the Plenkovic family have built a quite nice restaurant below the house on the waterfront, with a small marina attached, but have battled the winter waves each year, which wreak havoc on the underwater pilings and the restaurant windows.     Tasting Croatia’s Only Grand Cru     We sit around the family table with stoneworkers who are building a terrace in front of the house, and taste wine over supper of salad, sauteed mushrooms, roasted eggplant and octopus, and blood sausage, with a not-too-sweet walnut spice cake for dessert.     Zlatan makes a couple of whites from bogdanusa and posip grapes, of which the Otok Hvar is now being imported to the U.S. for the first time. It’s the plavac mali, the red grape that predominates in southern coastal Croatia and is closely related to zinfandel, that goes into Croatia’s grand cru. We taste the three Zlatan Plavacs side by side. The “Barrique” and the “Grand Cru” are available in our wine shop.     ZLATAN PLAVAC 2005 is 100% plavac mali matured in 5000-liter neutral barrels. It has a black cherry aroma and only medium tannin and extract, with flavors also of black cherries, blood, dry leaves/tobacco, and a tobacco finish. (This is great with the homemade spiced blood sausage we’re eating.)     ZLATAN PLAVAC Barrique 2004 spends 18-24 months in barrique. It has pronounced oak on the nose, laid over plums, blueberries, and slight tar; fairly intense flavors of black cherries, plums, dry tobacco, and new oak. A well made wine good for sipping now, or hold for two to three years. Fantastic with parmigiano.     ZLATAN PLAVAC Grand Cru 2003 spends the same 18-24 months in barrique as the wine above, but the best juice is selected for this wine. The difference is higher extract, more fruit on the nose, and a mild, sweet oak; incredible deep black fruit on the palate, much more depth, subtler oak than the barrique wine, and better integrated, with excellent balance. This will develop nicely for eight to ten years.     Up the Mountain to Vineyards and a Monastery     In the morning, it’s still raining off and on. Marin drives us up the hillside behind the winery on loose stone tracks that are just wide enough for the Jeep. The rocks around us are a hard conglomerate of sharp white stones glued together with iron-red silt. The thick red soil where the grapes grow is “made” by feeding the conglomerated stone through a rock grinder that breaks it down. The vineyards here are all plavac mali, but it’s unclear whether they belong to Zlatan or to one of the growers he buys from. He buys all the grapes produced between the winery below us and a point about 4km to the west, toward Hvar town. Marin tells us all the growers are organic. Ultimately the best juice ends up in the grand cru wine.     We’re at the very top of the steep vineyards, just beneath the rocky mountaintop, so we hike just a little farther up to a cave where there’s a tiny Augustine monastery dating to the 1500s. The mouth of the cave is huge. Just where the opening begins, there is a retaining wall with a stone staircase leading up through a gate to a level terrace. In the center of this yard there’s a well with a wooden cover, a cross, and an empty and dilapidated stone hut that now has grafitti inside from hikers and campers. On the right is a chapel which is still used at least once each year, when there’s an Easter procession up the hill through the vineyards with a statue of Christ on the cross. Up a few steps to one side of the cave is a shrine to the Virgin Mary, and up steps to the other side one can go to the back of the cave, behind the shrubbery surrounding the monastery. There’s a large chamber that Marin says once led through the mountain to two different destinations, but the access point is now purposely blocked with boulders.     After lunch we head to Hvar city, a lovely resort town that we don’t have time to see because we’re catching a ferry to Korcula. It has finally stopped raining, and we sit in the cushioned outdoor lounge in front of one of the new boutique hotels drinking Cuba Libres and espresso until the boat arrives.

...says Gary Vaynerchuk of the Wine Library TV after tasting his first Zlatan Plavac Barrique. Gary continued all excited about this find: "This wine is sensational, downright great sensational." Thanks for your kind words, Gary, you confirm what we and many of our customers already knew: There are excellent wines produced in Croatia today and Zlatan Plenkovic is one of the top producers in the country.     For details on Gary's excitement tune into the third part of the recent edition of the Wine Library TV, episode 553:     Wine Library TV, episode 553.     And if you like to encounter some really good Croatian Malvasia and Grasevina we recommend the wines made by Kozlovic and Enginji. They rock just like the Zlatan Plavac rocks. Cheers!

Over a summer, two travelers drink their way through the wines of Mediterranean Europe          After an introduction to Zlatan Plenković's winery in Part 1 we will now continue with tasting notes on some of his wines.     But, what about the wines they have now? We tasted them and they are fantastic. We started with the 2006 Zavala, which is a strong white wine at 13% alcohol that we hadn't tasted before. It has a light fruit to the nose and carries a tad bit of citrus to it. Despite being 40% Pošip, it has a body that is more like Maraština, which is a much smaller part of the blend. Like any good wine, it gets more complex with more air, but retains the citrus tones out through the smooth finish.     We then moved to the Zlatan Plavac 2005 'regular'. This is the most basic version of their Plavac, although it is not the 'table wine' level and is still very much a 'high quality' wine as rated by Zagreb. When you first smell the nose, it almost has some dessert wine aromas to it and is dark and sweet. The body pulls up more smoothness with a touch of dryness that continues to hold the sweetish nose.     We finished out with their master creation, the Zlatan Plavac Grand Cru. It was the 2004 that we were given and the beauty of this wine is that it takes the regular Plavac and amplifies it by a factor of ten. It's almost hard to describe it beyond this except to say that is has wonderful berries to the body and that signature, smooth Plenković finish.     These wines were all stellar creations and from a man who started without the family background that so many other vintners have. Maybe it's this fresh start that freed him to try things differently, or maybe this would have been the case even if he was inheriting cellars born of 400 years of family history. If you ever find yourself in a position to try any of these wines, take advantage of it or buy them to enjoy today.

Over a summer, two travelers drink their way through the wines of Mediterranean Europe          An hour and a half by ferry from Split, the capital of Dalmatia, lies Hvar island. Called Pharos by the Greeks that occupied the island since the 4th century BC, Hvar is the longest of all Croatian islands, a narrow strip of land stretching for 42 miles. In the last few years it has become a popular touristic destination and is now famous for its lavender (of which we didn't actually see any), and its Plavac mali wines.     While not a household name in the United States, the wines of Zlatan Plenković have gotten extremely well known in wine circles and haven't stopped receiving international awards and recognition. Based in the little village of Sveta Nedelja on the Southeastern coast of the island, Zlatan Plenković's first release was just a few years ago in 1999 and he has only been producing since 1996. In that time, his wines have gotten to be in such high demand that they sell out of all their reds three months after bottling.     Zlatan Plenković is very unfortunately not in the best of health these days (although that isn't stopping him from enjoying life), his sons taking up the reigns of the business with great aplomb. We chatted with his younger son, Nikola who was a great host. He told us about some of the experimentation that they're doing in conjunction with the main Agronomical Institute in Zagreb where they are trying to grow Zinfandel, Primitivo, and Plavac Mali side by side in their vineyards. Why would they do this? Simply for the fact that these are grapes that are all closely related and in fact Zinfandel is the parent of the other two. So, they are curious to see how the grape will grow after a 150 year holiday in California. We were curious what they were going to do with the grapes after harvesting and testing and with a bit of prying, Nikola said that they would most likely bottle them, but he wasn't sure. So, as crazy as it sounds, there might be a Croatian Zinfandel and a Croatian Primitivo to buy at some point in the near future, although the release is most likely going to be so small that it will be hard to find anywhere.     Next, we talk about the wines of Zlatan Plenković's winery in Part 2 in our coverage of his winery.