If you pay any attention to the names of Croatian wineries and family-owned restaurants and farms, you’ll certainly see the abbreviation “OPG”, which stands for Obiteljsko-poljoprivredno gospodarstvo, or in English – a family farm. Many of those family farms will also be mentioned on these pages, as many of them make wine, some of them really, really good wine, and some not so good, for personal use and some even the type of wine which should be avoided at all cost.
Hažić Family Farm from Međimurje makes some of the best wines in Croatia made by an OPG, and their OPG is one of the farms that has received most awards and other types of recognition in Croatia. One of the northernmost wineries in Croatia, in Jurovčak, near Sveti Martin na Muri, it’s run by a four-member family team: mother and father Biserka and Radenko, and their two daughters, Tatjana and Valentina. The farm was started in 1993, on an old vineyard belonging to Radenko’s family in Jurovčak, where they started growing vines and – apples. And now, still, those two fruits are the family’s key products, as they are well known for their wine and their apples, apple chips, apple cider vinegar etc. And the daughters have grown with the farm, and now they have both graduated – Tatjana has a degree in marketing in tourism, while Valentina has a degree in viticulture. If there ever was a perfect combination for a family farm…
Over the years, they have grown their estate and their vineyards, and these days they have 2.5 hectares of vineyards, planted with graševina, chardonnay, sauvignon blanc and traminac (fragrant, or Croatian “mirisavi” clone of the gewürtztraminer), and they make a cuvee of graševina, chardonnay and sauvignon blanc, called Martinovo ruho. Their cellar’s pride and most awarded wine is traminac mirisavi, very fragrant, semi-dry, with excellent acids achieved with an earlier harvest, wine best enjoyed with foie gras on home-made bread, and some desserts. Sauvignon blanc made by the family is considered to be one of the best sauvignons in Međimurje, having won several gold medals, with a wonderful fresh elderflower flavour. And, yes, have we mentioned that you can buy dried elderflower here as well, and make elderflower tea?
They produce around 20000 litres of wine per year, and almost 90% of that wine is sold in the family’s “Vinska kuća”, a restaurant/tasting room/cellar. It is probably one of the nicest places in Međimurje to taste and enjoy wine, and the Hažić family will offer you guided tastings and some home-made Međimurje delicacies, such as “meso z tiblice” (if you decide to enjoy some, don’t miss the opportunity to have some of Hažić’s graševina with it, as they are paired perfectly) and charcutterie products, mostly carefully prepared by mother Biserka. At their Vinska kuća you’ll be able to buy their wines to take home with you, and you’ll be very pleasantly surprised with the prices, as they are much lower than you’d expect for such high-quality wines.
