At the G.E.T. Report headquarters – as our friend Dušan Jelić would say, this time an interesting crowd gathered.
In order: Jeffrey Teglas is a Vietnamese adopted by a Hungarian in the USA. In fact, the family adopts three children, give them a home and education and they become excellent managers, not surprising as the family deals with insurance. Now you may wonder what this has to do with us. It does. The connection is, of course, wine. Jeffrey’s sister opened a winery in Santa Barbara, bringing grapes from the Napa valley. So, the people love wine, produce it, live with it. Jeffrey’s work brings him to Europe, Denmark precisely, where along with a successful career he meets his future wife Doris. You’re guessing right, she’s Croatian. As the tow of them are expecting a baby, so Jeffrey is becoming unavoidably connected to Croatia. During his stay in our country he realizes that the export of our wines to Denmark, Sweden and England would be a sound business move.
Internet research kept bringing up the name of Ernest Tolj and Saints Hill winery. Congrats on the presentation. Other info on Croatian wineries was insufficient and incomplete so Jeffrey only met Ernest Tolj. At the moment he figured he had a huge research job ahead in exploring Croatian wines, but the story gets a twist. In one social gathering with our joint friend, Jeffrey naturally talks of his wine and plans and our Maja gets an idea: “Well I have to introduce you to the G.E.T. crew! Silvija and Tomica are what you need.” They made an appointment and the presentation was ready in three days.
Saturday arrived and we were anxious to meet our guests. Very quickly the story turned into a real wine path as, in the words of professor Dropuljić, you’re either a wine man or you’re not – no deceipt there. It turned out Jeffrey knows a lot about wine and gastronomy in general and what truly matters, he’s ready to learn. I like his busines approach which can be summed up as: slow and longterm. The man ponders restaurants, famous personas as private buyers for personal needs, partys and gifts and wants the real stuff – quality. The story went on from the afternoon to the evening and more, so we got to know each other quite well. I believe this is the beginning of a lovely story.
We presented, on short notice, mostly what we had available or could acquire quickly. We naturally presented the so-called small producers: Tomaz winery with a Rose and White Muscat, Bertoša winery with a Malvazija and his frizzante wines, Toreta winery with a Pošip, Puhelek-Purek winery with two Sauvignons and a Mali Plavac Marča Vrh of the Pecotić family. With this we naturally presented a wide palette of high quality cheeses of the Bohnec dairy from Ludbreg, Torkul olive oil and Olive Leaf Tea of the Žuvela family in Vela Luka.
Reactions to all tasted were positive, which doesn’t mean they will all be exported. We’ve arranged a tour of certain wineries for Jeffrey’s next visit and a better introduction with Croatian wine and gastro scene. We invited him, naturally, to be our guest at the VINOcom festival in the Esplanade hotel as that event is coming soon. We are especially glad of Jeffrey’s stating he has a much clearer understanding of Croatian wine now and being grateful for stepping with us into Croatian wine paradise. This means we did a good job along with our friends Maja and Bojan whom we thank along with producers such as Tomaz winery, Toreta winery, Puhelek-Purek winery, Bertoša winery, Jo.Ma.Jo. farm, Bohnec dairy farm and Fanito oilery.
Original article in Croatian here.
