“My mentor was Henry Bishop, longtime sommelier at Chicago’s Spiaggia,” says John Aranza, who now runs Autre Monde in Berwyn, Illinois. “He was celebrated for seeking out unique varietals, like Tuscany’s colorino,” an obsession that played out in the restaurant’s extensive Italian wine list. Bishop’s curiosity didn’t stop there: Knowing Aranza’s family was from the Dalmatian coast, he suggested they go together to check out the vineyards.
“Probably the first wine that struck me was from my family’s vineyard in Kastel Novi—it was fresh, spicy, and [Bishop] was really impressed. When we came back, he began seeking out Croatian wines while I was discovering my family roots. And it was fun watching the evolution of attention to zinfandel,” Aranza says, referring to the discovery of the grape’s relationship to Italy’s primitivo and Croatia’s tribidrag.
Croatia’s wines have been slow to come to the US, but he has found plenty to get excited about. “As I was trying all of these wines, I found a common ground of acid and minerality—a nice rise of acid that met the fruit that reminds me of a warm climate, but not too hot.” They also give him a sense of what he terms “rocky, beachy terroir” in their textures.
1. Piquentum Istria Teran
“I really like Istria,” Aranza says, referring to the far northern reaches of Croatia’s coast. In part it’s the collision of cultures that’s intriguing—the region was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until WWI; now it shares borders with Slovenia and Italy. “The sea effect really shines through the wines, and yet they also have this sense of earth that reflects the dark forests and truffle production,” he says, finding the effect most pronounced in teran—known in Italy as refosco. This dark, inky red comes from a winery housed in an old concrete water tank, the vines growing nearby in the region’s ferrous soils. “It expresses an incredible fragrance of earth,” Aranza says, “and the fruit is structured and giving, with black pepper and exotic spices.”
2. Ivica Pilizota Sibenik Plavina
Plavina grows all along the Dalmatian coast, an ancient, natural cross between Puglia’s verdeca and tribidrag—better known as primitivo or zinfandel. This one comes from a particularly dramatic location: “It’s a Mediterranean climate but a stark land, deforested for the wood used to build Rome,” says Aranza, describing Sibenik, a town in the central coast. “Walking the vineyards is like walking onto the beach: just white-tan soil, the light bouncing back to you.” The wine, he says, recalls pinot noir in its ruby color, bing cherry and wild raspberry fruit and earthy flavors, making it a red fit for seafood, particularly wood-roasted fish—“it picks up smoky qualities really well.”
3. Katunar Isle of Krk Anton Syrah
Krk used to boast thousands of acres of vines; today, there’s a little more than 600. Anton Katunar launched his winery in 1990, planting a mix of international grapes alongside the local varieties. In these extreme conditions—“a couple hundred meters above sea level, all limestone and dry farmed; there’s no water on the island”—a grape like syrah shows its own distinct personality. “We are definitely not talking Hermitage,” Aranza says, finding it has more in common with wines from Istria, just around the bend of the bay. “It has a northern Italian sensibility; the bramble fruit shows gorgeously, delivered with spice and moderate acidity.”
4. Bura Peljesac Galeria
“I came across this when I had Bordeaux drinkers looking for Bordeaux Supérieur,” Aranza says of this plavac mali blended with some marselan and cabernet. “Marselan is a cabernet descendent, and plavac has a very Le -Bank Bordeaux-like sensibility; it has that minerality.” The wine comes from the Peljasic peninsula in the southern Adriatic, above the city of Potomje, where the days are Mediterranean-warm and nights are cool. “I like that they are playing with more universal grapes but letting the climate and terroir work its magic.”
5. Vuina Kastel Stafi lic Plavac Mali
While plavac mali was initially thought to be zinfandel, DNA testing has shown it to be a cross between zinfandel and dobricic, an old Dalmatian variety. Still, Aranza fi nds, “This drinks like an old-vine zinfandel,” noting its full body and dark fruit. While Aranza admits that plavac can be lackluster and thin, he find this one exceptional, a small-production wine from the center of the Dalmatian coast. “The rocky soil and reddish-brown clay are reminiscent of coastal Italy directly across the Adriatic,” he says. So, perhaps, is the wine’s acid-tannin structure, which he fi nds incites hunger: “You could have lamb anytime with this.”
6. Vinarija Dingac Peljesac Dingac Plavac Mali
“Dingac is to Croatia as Chianti is to Tuscany,” Aranza says. The country’s fi rst o cially recognized appellation, it sits on the west coast of the Peljesac Peninsula, the vineyards perched high up on cliffs at such extreme angles that donkey-pulled carts are the only vehicles allowed among the vines. Old vines and the warm, southern Mediterranean climate mark the flavors of this wine, “very ripe, with lush fruit, exotic spices and smoke, all entangled with a backbone of acid,” Aranza says. “Dingac has always been the finessed wine of Croatia. I’ve had vintages eighteen years old still showing beautifully. If there’s a defining wine for Croatia, it’s this grape and place.”
This story appears in the print issue of Fall 2016.
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