You may travel through Europe today with only your ID card, but Dalmatia has just introduced – a passport! Not any kind of passport: this one is for the Plavac Mali Republic. It is being issued, directly to the holder’s name, by the Embassy of Plavac Mali in Zagreb, specifically the Plavac Mali Zagreb Association, made up of many business people who live in the Croatian capital and are great admirers of Plavac Mali wines.
The core goal of the Plavac Mali Zagreb Association is to entice the planting of vines and proliferation of the plantations of Plavac Mali, aiming to aid in the preservation and quality use of land resources of the Croatian southern coast and islands and prevent the devastation of the Adriatic coast, as well as help young people stay on the land along the seaside.
“We see Plavac Mali as a Croatian brand, something we inherited from our grandfathers and which we can proudly leave for our grandchildren, something that is uniquely ours and which will always connect us to our homeland,” said Željko Stipinović, President of the association and current ambassador of Plavac Mali.
As with all passports, this one has plenty of pages for visas, which are in this case not something that enables you to arrive somewhere but rather to leave somewhere joyfully. The empty pages will be stamped by winemakers who are visited by the passport holders and convinced of the high value of Plavac Mali. Some passport holders may receive, after five glasses of Plavac Mali at a winery, a bottle as a souvenir from the winemaker!
