September 21 marks the last day of the 2022 harvest. We gather at the crack of dawn for a long day of labor ahead. The grapes are picked on steep hillsides, where the terrain is rocky and the is sun strong. Today we work against the northern wind, called Bura. Everyone here today is an experienced grape picker: these are people who have worked in vineyards, for others and very often for themselves, for years. Vineyards in our area are still a part of local culture.
The last harvest of the season in our vineyard is always the local variety Plavac Mali – this grape is the king of all Croatian red grape varieties. All other are harvested before – Crljenak, Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah and Tempranillo – as Plavac Mali is the last to ripen. We have to keep a watchful eye on its sugar levels: lower sugar levels are needed for rosé, higher for red wines. This was a harvest for full bodied red wines. We might blend Plavac Mali with foreign grape varieties from our vineyard. Our enologist Nikša will make this call after the first phase of the wine-making process.
We produce our wines in Vrlika, in Dalmatian Hinterland. The grapes are grown on a hill with a view of the island of Vis but end up in barrels under mountain Dinara. It is essential to transport the grapes there within a couple of hours after completing the harvest, and we manage to do so because our truck driver understands what is at stake. He owns a vineyard too. In Vrlika we are greeted by an experienced team headed by our enologist. By the end of the day hundreds of crates of grapes will be turned into must and then placed into tanks were the fermentation process will soon start turning sugar into alcohol. We are making wine. First works in the vineyard were started in late January, and here we are, making the last wine of the season. We are satisfied because we feel we have done something substantial, something good.
We welcome visitors for the better part of the year. The vineyard is large, we have an entire hill for ourselves. The location is quiet and serene, a complete opposite to the chaos on the coast beneath us. Our guests usually visit us for guided wine tasting tours, but also for special events. When it comes to wine tastings, our star attraction is Crljenak, a grape variety indigenous to our area, which was forgotten for a hundred years, only to make a cinematic comeback at the beginning of this century once it was discovered that the famed Californian grape variety Znifandel is in fact Crljenak. This discovery prompted us, and many other new winemakers at the time, to start producing wine.
The story of Dalmatian wines is an interesting one, also due to the fact that the places it originates from, the vineyards themselves, are incredibly scenic. Red grape varieties are usually grown in vineyards located on southern slopes of hills, in close vicinity of the sea, which results in breathtaking views. The view from our vineyard is, without exaggeration, the most beautiful one around: it overlooks the entire Central Dalmatian archipelago on one side and the dramatic mountains separating the cost from hinterland on the other.
Only three kilometers from the historic center of Trogir as the crow flies, but tucked away on the hills above the town, our vineyard can be reached by road, the final quarter of which is a dirt road where sheep, goats, and horses often graze. This is the rural face of Trogir, one yet to be explored.
Our vineyard is simple: grape vines as far as the eye can see, a stone cottage in its center, and a sun-deck at the top of the hill. Regardless if you are visiting us to get better acquainted with wine, to watch the sunset with a glass of wine in your hand, for a team building or a wedding, we will gladly show you around.
“Kairos” signifies the perfect moment to take action. It was a concept used by ancient Greeks to express the idea that there is a perfect time (and place) for everything we do. But the catch is, how do you recognize this moment and seize it? We hope we seized our perfect moment when we decided to plant our vineyard and produce wines. Our mission is to make sure that everyone tasting our wines feels as is they have seized a perfect moment, their own private “kairos”.
