Winter on Hvar? Time to enjoy wine tasting outdoors!
It was not brilliantly sunny, as we’ve come to expect in recent weeks, indeed there were clouds and a few spits of rain, but still the Hvar weather was perfectly acceptable today. Warm and fine enough for coffee outside, followed by a special treat, snacks and a wine tasting in Dvor Duboković’s newest wine cellar, right in the middle of some of the family’s vineyards between Pitve and Vrisnik.
The treat was organized by Total Hvar’s own Guardian of the Dialects, Professor Frank John Duboković, who hosted the visit alongside his father Ivica. Guests of honour were Marion and Zdravko Podolski, who have their own excellent blog detailing their experiences on the island, Go Hvar. They visited the vineyards in late summer last year with a group of artist friends, who produced some excellent work as mementoes, one of which was a vinorel, painted in red wine – the artist had forgotten her paints, but made excellent use of the materials to hand.
The last visit had its climax in a splendid supper at the Dvor Duboković in Pitve, complete with singing by Ivica’s harmony group, Klapa Bagulin. As we have observed during the course of last season, Dvor Duboković has risen from the status of ‘very good’ to ‘excellent / superlative’, so a feast there with the bonus of the Klapa singing can be considered one of the finest occasions Hvar has to offer. Paradoxically, the cook who is part of the restaurant’s success story, Vlatko Jelkić, is from Slavonia in north-east Croatia, as he proved admirably when given the chance to show off Slavonia’s delicacies after his busy season of cooking Dalmatian food superlatively well.
The restaurant is now closed for the winter, but the Dalmatian special snacks of fresh bread, pršut (smoked ham, similar to Parma ham) and salty cheese were the perfect accompaniment to the wines which were tasted. Ivica had not seen the pictures from Marion and Zdravko’s previous visit, so the iPad came into its own to remedy the defect, working perfectly even in the relative isolation of the open fields.
The Dvor Duboković red wine is highly prized, and this year’s young plavac mali is promising well: fruity… strawberry… good strong tannins at the moment… The comments flowed appreciatively and knowledgeably. Of special interest was the white wine, a combination of Bogdanuša and Parč grapes, roughly 80% of the former to 20% of the latter. This is in line with Teo Huljić’s new white wine, and the taste of the two at this early stage is fairly similar. Ivica’s white grapes are grown up on the hill in relatively fertile soil, whereas Teo’s are down near the sea on very poor red soil (which these grapes like). It will be interesting to compare the two wines directly when they are mature in the early summer. Both promise to be excellent, and they should offer slightly different tastes to reflect their different origins.
That is one of the delights of wine tasting on Hvar, where you can explore the details of the wine producer’s philosophy and how the wines are made, as well as inspecting the raw materials and seeing the soil, vines and the work that goes into bringing the best out of them. The labour involved in viniculture is never-ending, and Ivica tends to his fields with assiduous care. At this time of year, the main work is the fiddly job of cutting back the straggly strands, at the same time gathering together the stouter off-cut vine branches for the cooking fires.
Firewood is a big priority, both for use as heating fuel during the winter, and for the restaurant’s kitchens next summer. As most of the restaurant’s cooking is done over an open fire, a lot of firewood has to be prepared to last through the season. The wine tasting over, it was back down to Jelsa for another coffee, chat and to make plans for the next round of island entertainment. Marion and Zdravko are having an unusual and interesting time, with highlights reported on Go Hvar, including the effects of an earthquake on the mainland, and watching with wonder as a group of parachutists came down on the little Hvar airstrip, followed by their plane, one of the treats for adrenaline seekers offered from a base at Sinj airport. The latter event was of special interest to Zdravko, who knows much (possibly everything?!) about aeroplanes and flying.
Today’s wine tasting was pure pleasure without fear or adrenaline rushes. Thank you, Ivica and Frankie, we’re all looking forward to next year at Dvor Duboković!
