On my way to a tasting of
Wines of Croatia, I stopped for
lunch at a gastropub near the Barbican called
The Jugged Hare, specializing in
game and other hearty red-blooded food and a superb, wide-ranging wine list, a
lot of it by the glass. I asked the waiter for whatever light, dry white he
thought was best, as long as it wasn’t Chardonnay or
Sauvignon Blanc.
He came back a minute later with “the wine we all liked best at the staff
tasting this morning, we’re adding it to the list.” It was
Kozlovic Malvasia
2011, from. . . Croatia. Lovely, lively, lightly minerally, subtle but serious
enough; the flavour lingered nicely, and it was perfect with a chunky
venison-grouse liver terrine.
Over at the
tasting, I met Antonella
Kozlovic; the wine is from old
vines in a single vineyard, and shows all that; the standard version’s pretty
good too, though lighter. They also make a version aged in acacia barrels (as
do a few others in the Istria region—they have a lingering taste like that of
Chiclets, the candy-coated gum I chewed through childhood. Odd, for wine, but
popular, they told me.) Also admirable were Malvasias from Matosevic and
Agrolaguna; trying quite a few of that variety, it was obvious that oak
completely flattens the interesting edginess of the wines. The simplest and
cheapest were often the best.
Another
interesting white wine, from several producers, was called Grasevina, which
turned out to be Welschriesling—nothing to do with real Riesling. It’s widely
planted, has light floral aromas and zippy acidity, a pleasant sipping wine as
made there. Like Malvasia, it’s generally considered to be an also-ran, but
a goodly number of the Croatians are doing a delicious salvage job on both. Cheers!
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