When vintner Gianfranco Kozlovic was a young man, winemaking seemed a fool’s dream.
More than 15 years ago, Croatia was at war. Gun battles were being fought in the east and south in the messy breakup of Yugoslavia. The seaside land where the Kozlovic family lived for generations, a lush peninsula in northwest Croatia known as Istria, resisted the nationalist fervor of the 1990s but the momentum was clear. Soon Istria was isolated from the powers in Zagreb and turned into a vacation spot on life support.
Tourists disappeared, only to be replaced by refugees sent in by the government. Roads crumbled. Large vineyards in this wine region, economic engines under socialism, struggled to survive. There were no bold battles here but life stalled painfully from 1991 through 1995.
Kozlovic carved out a private peace by concentrating on a few good things: His family and his land in the verdant green hills and winding roads above the small town of Momjan near the Adriatic Sea.
“It was very hard then to be here. To stay here. Many people left. But I liked my country. I liked my land. I decided: It was the same 40 or 50 years ago and my father had the same choice–and he stayed. I wanted to do the same,” the ruddy 43-year-old said.
“Of course, at that time we were trying, in a war,” Kozlovic said. “You just work for your existence–and to give your family the necessities.”
By 1993, Kozlovic was among the first young entrepreneurs brave enough to bet the family farm that Croatia would emerge as a stable democracy. He believed the hard times would lead to historic private enterprise and European integration. He began shuttling between Italy for sommelier school and his family fields in Momjan to plant his first vines. Kozlovic also believed in Istria. A fabled land for wine since Greek and Roman times, his homeland could experience a wine awakening, he thought.
This after all was the land of the 45th parallel, part of a mythic culture in Europe. Winemakers of Kozlovic’s age and understanding–a generation that had to be willing to start from nothing–saw their toil as a way to re-claim their place in an ancient wine world.
Kozlovic found a kindred spirit in Ivica Matosevic, a one-time park ranger with a doctorate in bioagronomy. The two men were in their late 20s when they met in sommelier studies. They found they had the same philosophy: They believed in fine regional wines and linking their small market–Croatia accounts for 1 percent of world wine production–to an enlightened brand of ecotourism.
By 1996, as soon as the war ended, both were bottling their first vintages following stringent European methods, each under their own name. To their surprise, their wine received rave notices. The two realized that what had been a passion was now a real business opportunity. As the war faded in memory, the winemakers, and Istria’s tourist industry in general, saw prospects soar.
Istria is a young market and that means affordable. The Croatian coast has food and wine that are extremely good and extremely affordable, particularly compared to nearby Italy.
Today, a drive through Istria is a trip along a crystal-blue coast that looks startlingly like the Italy of old. The roads can dwindle to twolanes but the landscape flows from vineyards to fields of olive trees. Roadside restaurants abound with surprisingly inexpensive and luscious fare. Towns along the coast– from Pula to Rovinj to Porec to Umag–are again bustling with waves of sun-lovers and, increasingly, wine adventurers.
“Ten, 12 years ago, there were a lot of jokes about us among the locals,” Matosevic remembered. ” ‘Who are these guys trying to explain wine to us? We’ve been making wine at home for years,’ they’d say. But we tried to explain. … If people in a village liked their wine that way, fine. Sell it there.
“But I was absolutely convinced that there was wine of a high standard that we could make. … Now there is a very big dynamic here. We not only have fresh wines but aged wines … and there are a lot of people who appreciate what we are doing,” Matosevic said.
Matosevic, who now heads VinIstra, the regional wine association, jokes that he is a winemaker “who was born on asphalt.” His father was the director of the water utility in Croatia. His mother was a chemist. “That’s the closest I came to wine,” he said with a laugh.
Kozlovic, whose family always lived off the land, had another heritage altogether to uphold. His family had lived for generations on their rich hillside. The family house, rough-hewn at first, evolved after the war into a comfortable sprawling home and vineyard combined on an isolated hill. The Kozlovic family, like other farmers in rural Croatia, had always crushed grapes every growing season and produced homemade whites and red–often noticeably cloudy–in old wooden barrels. Such wines used at home and taken to market, were a matter of family pride.
When his father eyed the younger Kozlovic’s first golden chardonnay and straw-yellow malvasia– now the signature wine of this region–he sniffed. The new wines, the elder Kozlovic said, “looked too much like water.”
So the young man who was trekking across the country in the 1990s to market his wine and particularly to restaurants in Zagreb that catered to wine-loving foreignaid workers, made his dad part of his strategy. The two tasted and compared vintages in the vineyard’s tasting room, replete with wooden beams and charming black-and-white family photos, that Gianfranco built as his business prospered.
Recently, the younger Kozlovic cracked a smile when he heard his father grouse after a visit to an old friend’s home.
He had to drink rustic wine, far too cloudy and common, his dad said.
“I’m not objective. I like our wines and I like our Mediterranean lifestyle. … and I was born here and I liked listening to the stories of wine as a child,” Kozlovic said. “I listened to my father talk about how to calibrate wine, how to plant the vines … It’s part of me. I like that I am cultivating the land of my father and my grandfather and my great-grandfather. I have a respect for the land and what they did. They worked very hard.”
Today’s Istrian winemakers are firmly focused on what sets their wines–soft but flavorful, light and fruity–apart from the pack. Their chardonnays were easy successes. The big challenge was to define a wine that would put Istria on the map and lure tourists down their verdant wine roads.
Istrian winemakers realized they had to cultivate an aura as much as their grapes. Croatia’s tourism bureau was quick to make them part of a campaign to draw visitors to “the Mediterranean as it once was.” The vintners focused on a wine that complemented fish, pasta, truffles and the olive oil that was the region’s bounty.
Malvasia, a white wine once sipped by the Greeks and Romans who left stunning ancient ruins along the coast, became their wine of choice. Of today’s production, about 60 percent is now malvasia wine.
“It matched the taste, the region and the food of this region,” Matosevic said. “Year to year, the wine improved. … When we started, there was a time when all the good malvasia from here could have been drunk in a matter of days. Now, there are 100 wines here that could be served at any world table.”
Fresh malvasia, which goes to market the year after the harvest, ferments in stainless steel. The Istrian market is focused on malvasia; chardonnay, aged in stainless steel and oak; muscat and grappa. There is also a strong Istrian red known as teran, which is made from refosco grapes, that perhaps tastes best when poured to complement a meaty Croatian meal.
At a recent wine show in Porec, where the vintners gather every April to market their newest vintages, winemakers opened their doors to a fast-growing number of purveyors of olive oil and sun-dried ham. Each year, the wine show has expanded with more products and producers. Next year, VinIstra will open in a new convention center in Porec.
The Croatian gastronomic approach, promoting wine and food that is grown and produced in biologically rigorous ways, is aimed at creating a niche market at an affordable price. Wine roads have been in place since the 1990s and Croatia, which also has a strong inland wine region, has made wine tourism as central as its coastline to its economic vitality.
Foreign tourism has skyrocketed in the past five years, thanks in part to flights by low-cost carriers who land with planeloads of curious foreign tourists. But Kozlovic and Matosevic also see carloads of German, Italian and French visitors, sometimes jammed on Croatia’s still run-down road system, rolling up to their vineyards to stock up on the wines that are still a few years from European competitiveness.
They know their market is unlikely to be swept up in a kind of global search for the best wine. They see Istrian wine as a pleasure to be savored and particularly when one comes to the land where it is made. “This is a regional product. It is of the region. I want people to come here and want to drink the wine–with the food of this region, to enjoy this region,” Kozlovic said.
Vintners in Croatia said they have benefited from the generous know-how of their neighbors to the north, vintners in Slovenia who also were once part of Yugoslavia and winemakers from Italy’s Friuli region. All have helped them learn and anticipate the dynamics, Kozlovic and Matosevic said, including the warming trends that have triggered unheard-of August harvest in the last few years in sunny Istria.
Kozlovic sees no limit to Istrian wines’ potential. He recently purchased land in the San Lucia region of Istria, 20 hectares (about 49 acres) that daily soak up warm sun and cool breezes.
He is intent on making that land anew: The wine from that rich soil will be used purely for organic production, he said. Kozlovic now is studying yet again (he just recently earned his college degree) and will make his new wine part of an emerging trend in Istrian production.
“It’s impossible to do this quickly,” he said. “You have to let time pass. But I think it is absolutely better wine and I think, in this climate, I can do it. Everything is possible. Yes, it’s hard. But I learn.” Given the strict regulation of organic wines, Kozlovic said that he will have to wait two years to receive the designation. But coastal vineyards have no history of intensive agriculture so growers are well-positioned to create another niche market.
Kozlovic also represents another thread in the Croatian landscape of winemaking. He has persevered, over years, to acquire some sumptuous land. The hilltop property was once owned by the state. Vintners throughout this tiny country still are trying to untangle old land deeds and the country’s privatization laws to own such bounty.
“Socialism took all the land from the people and made big cooperatives,” Kozlovic said. “Now it is very complicated to patch together plot after plot of land. Really, it is like a catastrophe. It is hard to find a clear situation in order to buy the land.
“But just look,” Kozlovic said, smiling and pointing to the fertile rows of freshly turned earth that he now owns. “Sometimes you just have to keep at it. Because you know this will make the best wine possible.” – – –
BY THE NUMBERS
15,200: The number of vineyard acres in the Croatian province of Istria
3: The number of wine regions in Istria
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Buying the wines
Curious to try a wine from Croatia? A number of stores in the Chicago area carry them.
Lee Dancer, marketing and advertising director for Stanley Stawski Distributing Co. of Chicago, said Croatian wine sales in the region are “pretty big” for the company. Stores may be buying it one case at a time but that adds up over the year, especially around holidays, she said.
Who is buying the wines? Local Croatians, yes, but Dancer said some sales are made to Croatians from neighboring states who come to Chicago to stock up on products from home. And then there are the others.
“A lot of Americans are discovering them,” Dancer said. “You find a bottle of red wine on the shelf with a nice label and it’s priced at $6 to $7 a bottle, you’re willing to take a chance.”
Croatians tend to make wine blends “like the French,” said George Bozic Jr. of Bozic Imports & Wholesale Liquors in Harwood Heights. Look for a brand name on the bottle, he said, and, in smaller letters, the region where the wine was named.
Find Croatian wines at:
* Devon Market, 1440 W. Devon Ave., 773-338-2572
* Krystyna’s Deli, 1102 S. Roselle Road, Schaumburg, 847-534-5939
* Liquor Barn, 8170 W. Golf Road, Niles, 847-581-0060
* Minos Imported Foods, 648 W. Lake St., Addison, 630-543-0337
* Produce World, 8325 W. Lawrence Ave., Norridge, 708-452-7400
–Bill Daley
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The grapes
About 70 percent of the vineyards in Istria are planted with white grape varieties. While the so-called international varieties such as chardonnay, sauvignon blanc and cabernet sauvignon are grown here, Istria is home to some distinctive varieties:
Malvasia: A local variety of this grape, malvazija istarska, is grown throughout Istria. It makes a full-bodied, aromatic white wine with a tang that is often compared to apple skins.
Muscat: An ancient grape variety grown around the Mediterranean region in various styles under a number of names. In Istria, it’s called muskat momjanski or Momjan muscat, after a town in the northwestern part of the peninsula. This golden wine has an intense fragrance and is produced in dry and sweet styles.
Teran: A red wine grape variety that is part of the larger refosco grape family. It produces a deep red, robust wine.
–B.D.
Sources: Istria Tourism Board; “The World Atlas of Wine,” “The Sotheby’s Wine Encyclopedia,” “The Oxford Companion to Wine.”
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Christine Spolar is a Tribune foreign correspondent based in Rome.
IN THE WEB EDITION: For the seris so far, go to chicagotribune.com/wineline
