Monthly Archives: September 2017

To purchase this book, click here.

France and Italy, to take two examples, are complicated. But if you want to learn more about the wine scenes of France and Italy (or California or Germany or Argentina, to name a few more), you have no shortage of resources at your disposal. I’m sure the books written about French wine alone could fill a storefront shop.

Croatia? Not so much.

Yet Croatian wine deserves attention. I fondly remember the Katunar Syrah from the island of Krk that I recently found at my favorite wine shop, In Fine Spirits. It cost just $21, but it counted among my favorite wines of the year. Gone are the cooperatives of the socialist era, which prized quantity over quality. Once again, Croatian winemakers are free to pursue the best expression of their grapes, as they had been for the two millennia before Tito took over.

And Croatian wine is complicated. The country has some 130 indigenous grape varieties, many of which are all but unpronounceable to those of us who require the occasional vowel (or to those of us who haven’t the faintest idea what to do when an accent mark appears over a consonant). The place names, too, often look wholly unfamiliar. Istria maybe rings a bell, but Pelješac? Brač? Maybe not.

I’ve even been to Croatia — more than once — but I still feel like a rank amateur when it comes to the wine. I was therefore very excited to see that two of my favorite fellow wine writers, Dr. Matthew Horkey and Charine Tan of Exotic Wine Travel, released a new book: Cracking Croatian Wine: A Visitor-Friendly Guide. If you’re fortunate enough to be heading to Croatia sometime soon, I highly recommend looking over this highly readable and well-organized reference work. It will give you all the tools you need to drink some of the best that Croatia has to offer.

Dr. Matthew Horkey overlooking vineyards in the Dingač wine region

As a lover of unusual and obscure wines, I simply enjoyed reading the book, even though I have, alas, no plans to visit Croatia in the foreseeable future. Some stores in Chicago do carry the occasional Croatian wine, but they’re rarely presented in an appealing fashion. As Neal Martin of the Wine Advocate once wrote (as quoted by Horkey and Tan in their book), “Let’s not turn a blind eye to the fact that it has not been easy [for Eastern European wine] to shake off the tag of a ‘poor man’s’ wine, the kind of cheap-looking bottles you see languishing on the shelves next to the cat food in corner shops.” Now, I have a much better idea what to look for.

Even the most casual wine consumer, however, will find this book to be indispensable if he or she is traveling to Croatia. Horkey and Tan spent approximately seven months in Croatia researching this book, tasting wine all over the country, and trying out different wine bars and restaurants. Their book explains Croatian wine, yes, but it also serves as a guidebook to enjoying the good life up and down the whole of Croatia.

Charine Tan in Kutjevo, Slavonia

Cracking Croatian Wine has plenty of juicy tidbits for wine geeks like me, but it never gets bogged down with minutiae. The “Brief History of Croatian Wine” chapter, for example, is just two pages long. The chapter that follows, “Croatian Cuisine,” is one that everyone should read before heading off to the Balkans, particularly the list of “20 Croatian Dishes to Try.” I wouldn’t mind a bowl of pašticada right about now…

I also appreciate the list of Zagreb’s top wine bars and wine shops in the “Where to Buy Wine” chapter, and the subsequent “How to Decipher Croatian Wine Labels” is essential reading. It ends with the line, “Not so difficult, right?” I’m not sure I agree — I think I may need to have a copy of that chapter at the ready next time I plan on buying some wine from Croatia.

Similarly, the descriptions of indigenous Croatian wine grapes are incredibly useful. If you’re going to Croatia, give it a read-through, but then keep it handy as a reference for when you’re faced with a wine list. Few of us will be able to keep all 20 of the grapes straight, especially with names like Kujundžuša and Trbljan.

The Kozlović Winery in Istria

And, of course, there is quite a large chapter on the various wine-growing regions, including not only descriptions of the local wine style(s), but also recommendations of local wine bars. Each section has a list of suggested wines to try, with options “For the discerning palate and the connoisseur,” “For the adventurous palate and the wine geek,” and for “Fun and easy to drink.” Each wine recommendation comes with a photograph of the bottle, which can be ever so helpful for jogging the memory when one is in a wine shop.

The book ends with fascinating interviews with three authorities on Croatian wines, including writers and a winemaker.

I had a few minor qualms with the book. The vocabulary choices are occasionally a touch overblown, as in: “In Croatia, this would be a spurious opinion.” And more important, I wish that the authors had taken more of an opportunity to share personal anecdotes about their experiences. They warn us that “tasting visits may turn into a hedonistic afternoon of copious food and wine,” but they give us only the briefest of examples in a paragraph in the Preface. I would have loved to have read more about those hedonistic afternoons, but perhaps that’s for another book.

Along the Pelješac Peninsula

Those quibbles aside, I wholeheartedly recommend investing in Cracking Croatian Wine. It’s easy to read, well-organized and concise. For those traveling to Croatia who plan on drinking wine, it’s essential. And, no less important, it’s inexpensive.

You can purchase an electronic copy here for $7.99, and you can also use that link to buy a paperback copy if you prefer. The book certainly whetted my appetite for a return trip to Croatia, and this time, thanks to Horkey and Tan, I’ll be prepared.

Full Disclosure: Odd Bacchus receives a small percentage of the price of the books purchased using the links above.

Photo Credit: All photos above provided by Dr. Matthew Horkey and Charine Tan.

At a charming little tasting room I recently visited in the Pacific Northwest, I found myself feeling quite irritable, despite the good quality of the wines. To be fair, the woman pouring was new and nervous and just doing her best. But the three sins that she committed during the tasting have been committed time and time again by wine representatives far more experienced than she.

With the annual Wine Bloggers Conference fast approaching, it seemed an opportune moment to describe these three behaviors, since they happen with some regularity at each conference. Wine presenters, I assure you that I’m not the only one irritated by the experiences below.

Most egregious: Feeding me tasting notes

I get it — you’re excited about the wine, and perhaps you even made it. Perhaps you worked really hard to develop its complexity, and it makes sense that after putting all that work into the wine, you want me to appreciate its nuances. Sales representatives, too, doubtless feel motivated to make sure I don’t miss the rich blackberry fruit or the tobacco on the finish or whatever. Or if you’re new to the game, it makes sense that you want to sound like you know what you’re talking about, and that you can pick out gooseberry notes with the best of them.

Don’t do it. Let the wine speak for itself. If, before I’ve tasted the wine, I’m told that it exhibits notes of pears and lime and oak, it’s awfully difficult to get that out of my head and decide for myself what it tastes like. And I really want to decide for myself. I’m happy to discuss what the wine is like after I’ve tasted it and made some notes. In fact, I love doing exactly that. But getting a tasting note in advance of tasting makes my job that much harder.

Yes.

Almost as bad: Talking while I’m tasting.

To be clear, I have no problem with wine presenters talking to other people near me while I’m tasting. Chat away! But please don’t talk to me.

I’ve only been writing this blog since 2011, and I still need to concentrate if I’m going to write anything useful about a wine’s character in my notebook. If you’re trying to give me facts about the vinification or the terroir while the wine is in my mouth (or worse, telling me what it tastes like), you can count on me not retaining a word you say. Sometimes people even ask me questions before I’ve had a chance to spit the wine out, and I’m never sure how they expect me to answer. If I’m going to appreciate the wine and all its flavor nuances, I need to focus on it for a moment.

Spitting brings me to my third wine tasting sin: Providing poorly designed spit buckets.

Those of you fortunate enough to swallow most of the wine that ends up in your mouth may wonder what on earth I’m talking about. When tasting wine, I spit almost all of it out. It sounds disgusting, and perhaps even disrespectful to the wine, and I admit it is a little of the former. But if I visit, say, three wineries in a day, and swallow all those little tastes, I’ll be drunk, and I don’t like that feeling anymore. At the Wine Bloggers Conference, if I swallowed all I tasted over the course of a day, I’d be killed!

No.

Spit buckets are a necessary evil in all tasting rooms and at wine tasting events. Unfortunately, all too often, the spit buckets provided are simply buckets. This is a huge irritation of mine at the Wine Blogger Conference in particular. It doesn’t take long for a bucket to become full enough for it to splash back, however careful the spitter. And it is unquestionably disgusting to be splashed by a spit bucket. A simple, standard bucket is not enough.

On a recent trip to en primeur week in Bordeaux, my American companions and I remarked on the uniformly well-designed and sometimes even attractive spit buckets available at every tasting. Each had a concave top of one sort or another covering the bucket, with one or more small holes leading to the receptacle. Splash-back was never a problem. I even dared to wear a white shirt one day. These buckets need not be expensive, like the barrel-shaped model above. I’ve seen plastic versions that work beautifully.

I have to think that some of you have other wine tasting pet peeves, either as tasters or wine presenters. What behaviors drive you bonkers? Let me know!