For 16 years now the town of Dubrovnik has held large and quite festive celebrations of their patron saint, St. Blaise. The celebration is called “Festa Dubrovnik”, and usually lasts a week, organized by the humanitarian association Festa Dubrovnik. All of the proceedings from the festival go toward the renovation of St. Blaise’s church in the centre of old town Dubrovnik. A lot of interesting events take place in Dubrovnik in that period of late January – early February, in the preparation for the festivity of St. Blaise which is held on February 3rd every year.
The first event of the celebration is the blessing of the throats of the singers that will be performing in various concerts and performances, including a klapa (traditional choir singing), rock, classical and popular music concerts. Exhibitions and other performances will also be held, as well as two events that explain why this Festa is getting an article on Total Croatia Wine.
First on February 1st at 11 am, in Mimoza restaurant on Pile a workshop on indigenous food and wine will be held. Tourism and Catering School Dubrovnik will be celebrating their 70th anniversary, and their students and teacher will be participating in the workshop, which will focus on a precious product coming from Mali Ston bay, around 30 kilometers north of Dubrovnik: oysters. Led by the legendary teacher of the school, Josip Žuvela, the students will prepare full menu with oysters, including raw oysters, oyster soup, oyster cooked on the grill and deep fried oysters. At the same time, members of the humanitarian association Deša will be preparing traditional Žrnovo and Mljet makaruni (pasta dish, former with ground beef and latter with goat cheese. All of those dishes will be offered to those attending and two winemakers from the Dubrovnik Neretva County will get the opportunity to pair their wines with the offered oyster dishes: Andro Crvik from Konavle and Luka Krajančić from Čara on the island of Korčula. The varieties that are going to be presented are pošip from Korčula, plavac mali and Dubrovnik malvasia from Konavle.
The day after that event, in Dubrovnik’s Gradska kavana (which is, coincidentally, about 20 steps away from the entrance to the St. Blaise’s Church) a presentation of wines by the Dubrovnik Neretva County winemakers will be held. The presentation is expected to last the entire afternoon, under the name Festa od vina, and around 20 winemakers are expected to participate this year (this is the approximate number of participants in the past few years as well). So, if you happen to be in Dubrovnik for St. Blaise’s festa, don’t miss the opportunity to get to Gradska kavana and taste some of those great wines produced by the winemakers of the county. In addition to that, you will get the chance to participate in another humanitarian event, as the members of Deša and Ljuta Naranča associations will be selling the desserts they made, as well as the sweets donated for the sale by other confectioneries from Dubrovnik.
