It feels like we’ve only just enjoyed the last wine festival in Dubrovnik, as in early February as part of the celebration of St. Blaise’s day, the Dubrovnik Festival of wine was held, and already we are being invited to the next wine festival in Dubrovnik. Dubrovnik FestiWine is to be held for the fourth time this April, in the week of 17th – 23rd of April. It is organized as the regional festival of the Dubrovnik-Neretva County and produced by “Dubrovnik PartneR” agency, and its main goal is to promote the wine culture and the indigenous wine varieties of the Dubrovnik-Neretva County. This year, as the County Prefect Nikola Dobroslavić said at the press conference “As we have successfully repositioned and promoted the local wines in the total tourist offer of our County, Dubrovnik FestiWine will welcome the winemakers from the rest of Croatia and the other EU countries.”
The main events of the festival, the wine exhibitions, will take place on the Friday and the Saturday, but the entire week leading up to those main events will be dedicated to the wine. The so-called “Dubrovnik Wine Week” (Dubrovačka vinska setemana) will be held, during which participating restaurants, wine bars and other bars in Dubrovnik will be labelled “Wine Friendly”. Wine-lovers are invited to those bars, where they will get the chance to taste many of the wines of the Dubrovnik region, paired with the local favourite delicacies at affordable prices.
There will, of course, be a wine competition, where the panel of judges will choose the best wines of the festival, including the competition to select the wine that pairs best with the oysters (oysters from Ston are a well known delicacy, and something the County should be proud of!). This competition is called „Blind date: in love with Ston Oyster“, and will take place in Ston.
The next event on the busy schedule for Dubrovnik FestiWine is the gala dinner, to be held in the Dubrovnik Palace Hotel, where renowned chefs Fabricio Vežnaver and Petar Obad will create the meals. The strong wine-team, which includes last-year’s recipients of the scholarships Tihomir Antunović and Đuro Kravić, as well as Aleksandar Noršić, one of the best sommeliers in Croatia will pair the wines that won the competitions last year with those meals. We mentioned the scholarships: all of the proceeds from the Gala go toward the scholarships that help educate young local talent to become sommeliers.
The main event, wine exhibition, takes place on the Friday 21st and the Saturday 22nd of April, in Lazareti, starting around noon, where most wine producers from the County and many others, as invited by the Prefect, will have the chance to present their wines to the public. The full list of participating wine-makers has not yet been confirmed, but you can check it out at http://www.dubrovnikfestiwine.com/en/
