My friend and I went to Zagreb, Dubrovnic, Split, a National Park with waterfalls and hiking, and Hvar. We used Kensington tours and they do custom trips for you with private tours, private drivers, luxury flights, and high-end hotels. I have shared our itenerary if you want to try it. If you're a Game of Thrones fan, there are guides (not Kensington and they explained that they made a difficult decision on that) and shops you can see. The water there is safe and delicious.
It was amazing and filled with seafood, coastlines, parties, pasta, yachts, so much coffee, risotto, olives, beaches, olive oil, UNESCO sites and buildings, gelato, and amazing wine. Pretty much everyone speaks english and they converted their currency to euros 1/2023 so the barrier for entry is low.
We did three tastings and each was quite different: the first was a lovely, big place in Split perched on the coastline where they grow olives, lavender, and a native and ancient grape called plavic malm and treat it different ways like making rose or estate barrel-aged reds. We didn't meet the winemaker but the tastings included fresh olive oil grown there with fresh bread, anchovy filets, bruchetta with shrimp and tapenade, and four amazing wines.
Next tasting was done by a mid-sized commercial winemaking in his dusty and generations-old wine cellar amoung the barrels by candle light. We had unlimited tastings and the winemaker talked with us about how he and his Dad and grandfather maded plavic in a fairly traditional way.
Last tasting we had a driver to get there through the lovely switchbacks and fields to the country winery. We sat outside with the winemaker who is a bit of a rebel and pushes convention with his wines, which were a rose, a younger plavic, and an older plavic. We had unlimited tastings and he bemoaned that there are no younger people who want to do this trade. He shared his process and I shared mine, we talked about that he doesn't use cultivated yeast or do MLF but that he is a very award-winning maker at 40ish. He was super entertaining and kept bringing bottles out of the cellar for us to taste. I bought plavic rose and estate 6-year plavic mali.
In summary, consider Croatia as good a wine source as Italy with none of the pretense.
It was amazing and filled with seafood, coastlines, parties, pasta, yachts, so much coffee, risotto, olives, beaches, olive oil, UNESCO sites and buildings, gelato, and amazing wine. Pretty much everyone speaks english and they converted their currency to euros 1/2023 so the barrier for entry is low.
We did three tastings and each was quite different: the first was a lovely, big place in Split perched on the coastline where they grow olives, lavender, and a native and ancient grape called plavic malm and treat it different ways like making rose or estate barrel-aged reds. We didn't meet the winemaker but the tastings included fresh olive oil grown there with fresh bread, anchovy filets, bruchetta with shrimp and tapenade, and four amazing wines.
Next tasting was done by a mid-sized commercial winemaking in his dusty and generations-old wine cellar amoung the barrels by candle light. We had unlimited tastings and the winemaker talked with us about how he and his Dad and grandfather maded plavic in a fairly traditional way.
Last tasting we had a driver to get there through the lovely switchbacks and fields to the country winery. We sat outside with the winemaker who is a bit of a rebel and pushes convention with his wines, which were a rose, a younger plavic, and an older plavic. We had unlimited tastings and he bemoaned that there are no younger people who want to do this trade. He shared his process and I shared mine, we talked about that he doesn't use cultivated yeast or do MLF but that he is a very award-winning maker at 40ish. He was super entertaining and kept bringing bottles out of the cellar for us to taste. I bought plavic rose and estate 6-year plavic mali.
In summary, consider Croatia as good a wine source as Italy with none of the pretense.
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