Hvar never ceases to surprise. With all the hype surrounding Plavac Mali on the international wine scene, isn’t it worth mentioning that the oldest surviving certified Plavac Mali vine is on Hvar? Dol is where it is at…
I will never cease to be amazed at this fabulous island. So much still to discover, and SO much that has not been documented in words, certainly in English.
Take, for example, the oldest olive tree on Hvar. An amazing story and, if the age claimed is even close to the truth, it makes it one of the oldest olive trees in the world. Check it out here.
There was an article on the Tartajun site about old vines recently. I didn’t have time to read it as my Croatian is not what it could be, but when I saw the President of Tartajun and his Official Girlfriend on the ferry to the Hajduk game yesterday, I passed him my birthday congratulations and asked him to give me a summary.
Well, it turns out that not only does Dol have the oldest certified surviving Plavac Mali vine in the world, dating back to the 1860s, but President Sime is the proud owner of it! In the words of the president:
“That vineyard of plavac mali from Dol is oldest because it survived all of the grape diseases and other troubles. Probably there were older vineyards, that maybe also survived that diseases from beginig of the 20th century, but didn’t survived other diseases later, or grapes were replaced by some other plants or something like that.
I will paste few sentences that I found on web:
„There are actually still 20 vines originally planted in 1860 by Mate Stančić. These are self-rooted, since the soil is sandy enough to stop the dreaded phylloxera bugs. So many vines died off in the early 1900s, that this small remnant of 150 year old plants is quite a rarity.“
So, this is all true, and all of this and the age of the vineyard (and the fact that it is the oldest) was discovered by Mr. Ivan Pejić, profesor from Zagreb University, he wrote a book about it (maybe more than one, I’m not sure), and he wrote an article in 3rd Tartajun:
http://www.tartajun.hr/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=68&Itemid=86“
This is fantastic news, and certainly something that can be built on as Hvar looks to promote its wine story. It is great that the owner is someone as forward-thinking at President Sime, and nice timing too, with the Hvar Wine Association bringing a team of journalists to Hvar on May 5 after Dalmacija Wine Expo.
Plavac Mali. That Caric Ploski 08 is looking at me across the room…
The president has agreed to take us to the vineyard on his next trip to the island in a couple of weeks.
