Iločki podrumi, a winemaking company from the eastern Croatian town of Ilok, invited Total Croatia News to the presentation of their innovative wine – Graševina from 2011, which has been kept underwater for a year.
We wrote about the Vino i vruja event, and you can read more about it here.
The presentation of the wine was held in Matiz bar in Zagreb, a day before the VINOcom festival, and it included the tasting of the “ordinary” Graševina Velika berba 2011 (“Big Vintage”), followed by the tasting of the same wine which has been kept underwater for a year.
Graševina Velika berba 2011 is an exceptional vintage of the Graševina from 2011, when the winemaker Vera Zima recognised the ideal conditions for the vintage and decided to make a great wine from it, destined to be kept for a long time and be cherished. She put some of it in the ideal conditions of the old cellar built in 1450, where it was held at a constant temperature of 14°C. It was first introduced to the Croatian market in 2015, and it has won many awards and compliments, as it is often said that it’s the best vintage of Graševina ever made in Croatia. It’s a mature Graševina from the Danube river region, luxurious, full of flavour, wonderfully varietal but with amazing tertiary aromas present.
Then, last year, a decision was made to experiment with that fantastic wine, which has been developing wonderfully in the bottle and put some of the bottles into the Adriatic, and not just anywhere, but in a location near freshwater wellsprings, where the temperature is almost constantly at 7°C.
After a year spent in those conditions, the 1,100 bottles were taken out, and journalists and partners were given the rare opportunity to taste it. The first thing you notice, after having tasted the version of the wine which wasn’t submerged, is that the underwater version, dubbed “Wine with a touch of the Adriatic” (Vino s dodirom Jadrana) is different.
Davor Butković, a prestigious Croatian wine journalist, said that the wine tastes as if it has gone through a facelift while in the sea, and the others agreed with him. Karmela Tancabel, a member of the Board of Iločki podrumi highlighted the intense bouquet of the wine, its minerality and freshness, and how the wine tastes younger than its counterpart. Saša Špiranec, a Croatian wine expert, mentioned that you could almost feel the sea in this wine, although it obviously never came in direct contact with the sea.
After that, our hosts surprised us with two additional wines from their archives, the fantastic 2008 Graševina with an amazingly long aftertaste and the strong potential of even further aging in the bottle and a fabulous sweet Rajnski Riesling from 2006, which tastes like most delicate apricots and honey and pure joy. Those two wines were presented by a young, “next-generation” enologist, Marko Marko.
If you decide to visit VINOcom, don’t miss the opportunity to taste some of the Iločki podrumi wines!
