Plešivica Croatia
Just outside of capital Zagreb, Plešivica offers wine travellers authentic off-the-beaten-track hospitality, say CHARINE TAN and MATTHEW HORKEY
OFTEN, THE FIRST place that comes to mind when speaking of Croatian wine are the coasts of Dalmatia and Istria, where tourist traffic soars to new heights year after year. What’s lesserknown is the fastest-rising star on the Croatian wine scene, situated merely 30km southwest of Zagreb, Croatia’s capital.
The A1 motorway, Croatia’s longest expressway, approaches the pastoral Plešivica on a flat plain, but once you make a turn and head north, the road starts to wind its way up into the hills. The abrupt change in elevation swiftly leads to panoramic views of the flatlands. Tiny villages are linked by one-lane roads and the steep hills are adorned with scattered patches of vineyards. Life begins to move at a slower pace, making Plešivica seem a world apart from the nearby city.
Plešivica’s 30-odd family-run wineries have small holdings of vineyards, each varying from one to eight hectares. Though small in scale, what’s commendable is how expeditiously some of these wineries have reinvented their viticultural practices in the race towards the success they hold today.
While Plešivica has a long wine history — it is believed that the Thracians brought grapevines to present-day inland Croatia and passed on the methods of wine production to the Illyrian tribes — and the oldest written record about its winemaking dates back to 1370, the modern wine culture as we know it today was established in the 1990s. Between 1918 and 1991, when Croatia was part of Yugoslavia, the socialist state forbade small-scale commercial wine production. Wine growers were forced to sell their grapes to state-run cooperatives where large quantities of bulk wine were made. Quality winemaking survived during that time in the form of home winemaking for personal consumption.