Pinkert winery is one of the “old” winemaking families in Baranja. Their first vineyards on the slopes of the Bansko hill in Baranja were planted in the early ninety-hundreds, and soon after that a small family cellar was built into the hill, near to the vineyards, in the dreamy village of Suza in Baranja. And each generation since has done their best to make the best wine possible, and have people enjoy it as much as possible. This generation has, as is the case with many family-run wineries in Croatia, taken the technology of wine-making one step further, while still maintaining the basic philosophy that top wine can only come from a well-kept and a healthy vineyard, so their vineyards are often said to be amongst the most beautiful vineyards in Baranja.
And those 14 hectares of vineyards have the ideal position, at the 200 meter above the sea altitude, which is considered to be the prime location on Baranjska kosa. The winemaker from the Pinkert family, Zoltan Pinkert whose initiative it was for the family to start bottling their wine is helped in the cellar and in all other aspects of the family business by his daughter Kristina – not an sight seen often in Croatian winemaking, but, traditions are here to be forgotten and left behind… She has been known to say that some of their success can be attributed to the fact that everyone wants to see a young woman spending all her days in the cellar, so they come in, she offers them some wine and that is basically it. And Kristina takes full credit for the label on their wines and their visual identity, which is dominated by a pink tulip flower – it took her a lot of work and effort to persuade her father that that’s the look that is going to work for them.
They grow and bottle graševina, sauvignon blanc and chardonnay of the whites; their reds are frankovka and cabernet sauvignon and a cuvee, which they describe as the blend of all of their red varieties: frankovka, cab-sauv, merlot and another local favourite: portugizac. And one of their best-received wines on the market in the past few years, since they went into wine-selling business is their frankovka rose, regularly placed on any list of the best Croatian rose or summer wines. Dry, refreshing and fragrant, their 2015 rose is a very modern rose, and you should take any opportunity to taste or buy it (the price is more than fair for such a wine). Their biggest seller is graševina, and they have received several medals and awards for it in these few years since they’ve been on the market. Pinkert is a winery that any true fan of Croatian wine needs to keep an eye on, because in their few years on the market they’ve shown that they have a lot of potential to make great wines in the future.
There is another detail that makes Pinkert winery quite interesting, from the business point of view: they’ve managed to get quite a lot of money, on three separate calls, from the European Union funds. And a lot of Croatian winemakers should be trying to achieve the same result, and asking the Pinkert family for their help.
