 Today, we are going to talk about how to read Croatian wine labels. Oh, welcome back to Exotic Wine Travel. I am your host, Matthew Horkey. Today, we are going to talk about how to read Croatian wine labels. If you follow our work, you know that we spend a lot of time in Croatia. We spend maybe three, four months out of the year in the country. We even wrote a book about Croatian wines cracking Croatian wine, a visitor friendly guide, which got won a Gormand award for best in the world. So a lot of this information we're going to talk about is covered more in depth in that book. It's on Amazon. I'll put the link in the description box. But I'm going to try to give you some tips and tools. So if you go to visit the country, you can understand the wine labels and you can choose with a little bit more confidence. So number one, you've got to understand a little bit about Croatian geography so you know what kind of wines you want to look for. You got to think, Croatia is broken up into four general wine regions. Two of those are on the continental portion of the country, receive more of a continental climate. And those two regions are the Croatian uplands and Slovenia and the Danube. Now these regions, you're going to see more white wines, even though there are some good red wines being made. In the uplands, you're going to see more cool climate varieties like Sauvignon Blanc, some cool Chardonnay. The Eaks actually have four mint, some very decent Pinot Noirs up in that area. And then Grasjevina, maybe more commonly known as Velsjevina around the world. Slovenia and the Danube is mostly a white wine region where it's kind of the spiritual home of Grasjevina. And you'll also see it's famous for Traminats or Gevitstramina, real floral white, although there are increasingly more good red wines being made there. Now there's two other regions that are on the coast, the Adriatic coast of Croatia. And number one, that's Istrian Kvarnar and then Dalmatia. In Istrian Kvarnar, you're going to see a lot of great whites made out of Malvazia Estarska or an English Malvazia Istriana. Now these wines can be floral, they can be simple, crisp, flowery, they can be barrel aged or they can be mass-raided, made in the orange wines. Istrian Kvarnar, you're going to also find some really exciting red wines that are based off the local grape Taran. I really like when Taran is blended with Bordeaux grapes like Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc. And Dalmatia, this is full-out Mediterranean region. You're going to find some really unique, exciting grapes like Poship, Vugava, Marastina, Debit. These are all white grapes. For red grapes, the main grape is Plovetsmali, a big, tannic, complex red, although there's some other exciting grapes you want to check out there. The next thing you need to know is a little bit about language. The Slavic language is intimidating for a lot of people because there's lots of consonants strung together without vowels in between to native English speakers that can be really super intimidating. And there are a lot of rules, but let me just break a few things down to you. Thanks for pronunciation-wise. The vowels, you got to know the vowels, the easiest comparison would be, they have all spanish sounds, A-E-I-O-U. So those are the vowels, A-E-I-O-U. That's how you pronounce the vowels in Croatian. Number two, some of the letters, especially you're going to see the letters C, S, and Z with weird little markings on them. C is one of the most confusing. If you see a C and there's nothing above it, it's pronounced like TS, whereas this producer, a lot of people in English speaking would say Tomak. This is Tomac. This is the proper way to pronounce it. Number two, if you see a C with just one angled hash on it, it's going to be like a soft chip sound. There's a producer in Dalmatia called Tomic, spelled like this. And then number three, if there is a C with a hard, with an upside down hat, that's going to be a CHI. Like this Croatian staple snack, which is dried pork, Cevátsi. You can see there's two different C's on that CHI at the beginning and a TS, TS thing, Cevátsi. So those, what do you have to remember for C? For S, if S does not have an accent, it's just like we would pronounce it. If it does have a hat on top of it, it's going to have a hard CHI. Like this indigenous variety, Skrlit. If there's a Z with an upside down hat, it's going to make a J sound like this producer, Karygia. Let's talk about some basics. Bielovino is white wine. Cernovino is red wine. Pianosiavovino is sparkling wine. Let's get into some more advanced stuff. So in general, Croatia will have four important pieces of information on the label. Number one, the producer. Croatians buy by producer. Number two, the great variety. Most Croatian wines are labeled by variety, although there are a couple appellations you've got to look up for, Postup and Dingach. Those are in Dalmatia, 100% Plovac Mali. Sometimes producers like to label their wines by the name of the Kuve that they give them. Like this example right here. We have Klai Brombonero. Brombonero is the name of the wine. It's one of Croatia's most legendary red wines. Actually, the grape is Rafasco and see that right there. Vintage number three is very self-explanatory. It will always show what year the grapes are grown. Number four is quality level. This is a throwback to Yugoslavia in times when Croatia was still part of the kingdom of Yugoslavia. So they have a state-run board that blind-tastes these wines and then tells you what the quality levels should be. And in Croatia, there's three levels. There's Stolnovino, which is this table wine, Fraletetno, which is quality wine, and Vergunsko. Vergunsko means it should be top quality wine. Now use these as a guideline. You have a lot of times some wines that are made kind of outside the state rules, the state laws. So they opt for a lower level of quality. There's some excellent wines named in the Stolnovino, just labeled as table wine. We have this Ipsa wine is Fraletetno, which means quality wine. It's an orange wine. That's why I think they move down in quality. This is a fantastic wine. You also have some Vergunsko wines that are just, I don't know who is tasting them. They cannot be that good. So use that only as a guideline. There's an extra thing that you should look out for. Sometimes you see it on the front label, but most of the time it's on the back label. It's sweetness level. Croatian wines will have the sweetness level indicated on the label. So a few things that you need to know, a few terms that you need to know. The word for dry is suho, suho. Most of the wines in Croatia will be dry. You'll also see wines that are half dry called polo suho. Then you'll also see sweet wines. The word for sweet is slatko. So hardcore ice wines, predicate wines, dessert wines are going to be labeled as slatko. Sometimes you'll see some semi-sweet wines named as polo slatko. I have two examples here that make it super easy. I'm going to show you. This is one of the easiest labels. We see, like I mentioned earlier, the producer's Ipsha. You'll see the great Malvazia 2017, super easy. On the back, you'll see that it's a qualitetno. This is a wine from Istria. Fantastic. Next, you have a wine label that's a little bit more complicated. And let's break this down. So we have Eningi is the producer up on top here. Venje. It's a single vineyard wine. It's the name of the blend in the 2010 vintage. You'll see that it's a Verhun scovino. So it's classified as top wine. There are some extra terms here. Casnaberba means late harvest. All the Vinogorje is the kutyevo that's a vineyard in kutyevo. We will cover that stuff more in depth in our book. So hopefully that's enough to get you started, to get you buying Croatian wines, selecting Croatian wines off the shelf, off the restaurant list with more confidence. If you want to know more details, check out our book, Cracking Croatian Wine, A Visitor Friendly Guide. It's on Amazon now. And if you like this video, please subscribe to our YouTube channel, Exotic Wine Travel. I will see you at the next episode.