HRTurizam reports that according to the new Wine Act, four wine regions are defined: Slavonia and the Croatian Danube region, Croatian Istria and Kvarner, Dalmatia, and the Central Bregovita Croatia.
Precisely, to develop and strengthen winemaking in Croatia, in 2019, the fourth regional viticultural organization was founded, Bregovita Hrvatska, which brings together winemakers and winegrowers from Bjelovar-Bilogora, Karlovac, Koprivnica-Križevci, Krapina-Zagorje, Međimurje, Sisak-Moslavina, Varaždin, and Zagreb counties, and the City of Zagreb, and has 63 members.
After working in the field and gathering winemakers, the Bregovita Hrvatska Association should soon become recognized as the fourth regional organization of winemakers and winegrowers, which will create conditions for better work on branding wines of indigenous varieties of the region in domestic and foreign markets.
The request to be recognized with a status of a regional organization was submitted a few days ago, and it is expected to be accepted very soon, which will enable more efficient branding of specific wines and Central Bregovita Hrvatska as a wine destination.
“In the area of Bregova Hrvatska, small family wineries predominate, mainly with a production of up to 100,000 liters per year. In addition to international, in the past period, there is a noticeable trend of planting indigenous varieties of this region such as škrlet, or old varieties characteristic of this area such as moslavac/pušipel, kraljevina, sokol, old Croatian white (Gouais blanc) and others,” said the vice president of the Croatian Chamber of Commerce for Agriculture and Tourism Dragan Kovačević, adding that demanding fieldwork was done because it was necessary to gather a minimum 25 percent of producers with more than 33 percent of vineyards.
By the way, Central Croatia includes seven counties and the city of Zagreb, and 20 percent of the total Croatian wine-growing area is under vineyards. Also, out of 12 protected designations of origin, five of them refer to Central Bregovita Hrvatska.
Recognition of Bregovita Hrvatska will enable the further development of complete domestic winemaking because each regional organization will independently finance promotional and marketing activities. It also opens up opportunities for developing winemaking strategies in each Croatian region, modeled on the development model of the most famous Italian or French regions whose winemakers operate through identical association models. Significant program assistance from the Ministry of Agriculture is also expected, and financial assistance from the state.
“Branding our wines is certainly our priority, but until the founding of this Association, our small producers were wasting a lot of time on administration and paperwork to get marketing subsidies, and now we all have a place at the table, and our voice is heard. Communication with the state through these four regions provided by law is, in my opinion, the only right path. The association will also help us with exports. Currently, due to the coronavirus, we can’t exhibit anywhere. Still, we have two offers – from the Asian market from China and India, and from Scandinavian countries, which we couldn’t even consider as individual producers because we wouldn’t have the necessary quantities. At the moment, due to the coronavirus, we have a lot of wine in stock, and these are the markets that can easily absorb these stocks,” explained the president of the Bregovita Hrvatska Association of Winemakers and Winegrowers, Marko Miklaužić.
The Wine Act positions regional organizations as partners in executive bodies to implement the national procedure for the protection of designations of origin and geographical indications of wine and strategic planning for the viticulture and winemaking sector.
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