One of the undoubted great characters of Hvar is winemaker Andro Tomic. Always full of enthusiasm and crazy ideas, Andro is one of the cheeriest men I have ever met, and it is always a joy to run into him, particularly when he is in a very good mood and happens to be near his car…
I had an appointment with his son about the Tomic wine blog I write (check it out here), and Andro was just getting into the car at the winery, but came over to say hello, before motioning me to come to the back of his car. The famous Andro car boot of treasures!
Inside, he rummaged around and very kindly gave me a bottle of Veliki Plavac Mali for Christmas (thank you!), then went back to fish out another bottle, which was even more interesting for me personally – a bottle of white without a label, with the words Cibib 2014 written on it.
Ah the Cibib! The memories came back. As followers of Total Hvar may recall, I used to live next to Andro, and our houses had a very tall vine in the small gap between them. It was, I learned, the oldest vine in Jelsa, dating back 150 years, and one day it was gone, with part of it now adorning the entrance to Andro’s spectacular Bastijana winery. I joked that he had stolen my vine and I could sue him, or settle in wine payment.
The vine was of the Cibib grape, not a wine had come across before, and just a table wine apparently. I had thought the vine was now dead, but not at all – it has been replanted somewhere in the UNESCO Stari Grad Plain, producing grapes to this day.
A wonderfully personal present, and rather a pleasant sweeter white wine too. I only got a mouthful as it had proved popular over the Christmas lunch with the ladies.
Just one more charismatic detail to the wonderful Tomic Hvar wine story.
