 Hello hello, I'm Matthew Horky and I'm Sherene Tan. Together we are Exotic Wine Travel. We've spent the last three years traveling around the world writing and speaking about unique and exciting wines. Our journey has taken us to both lesser known and established wine regions. In 2016, we came to Croatia for the first time. We fell in love with the country and the wines, prompting us to write the book Cracking Croatian Wine, A Visitor Friendly Guide. Now we're at it again. We're going to retour the country and bring our book to life. We aim to take you deep into the Croatian food and wine scene. So sit back, relax, and join us as we go Cracking Croatian Wine. If you're planning on visiting Slovonia, chances are that you'll have to come through Zagreb. The Tres Neafka Market isn't as scenic as the Dolets Market, but it's a lot less touristy. We're here to pick up our favorite Burdek from Burdek Mera. When we stay in Zagreb, we frequent the stand. Burdek is the favorite snack in this part of the world. It consists of a phylo dough wrapped around cheese, meat, or fruit baked to perfection. It's usually baked to do a pie shape and then cut into slices. The cheese version from Burdek Mera is our favorite. So good. Everything is perfect about this group, right? Fine wiggles. Our favorite place for coffee in Zagreb is across the street. Tenio Coffee is owned by a half German half Croat named Christian. They're one of the few shops in Zagreb that do a French press and cold brew coffee. We need the caffeine because tonight we're going to have a food marathon. We're eating at Dubrovkin Put, one of the top restaurants in the country. The restaurant also happens to have one of the best wine lists in Croatia. Dubrovkin Put sits in a quiet location above downtown Zagreb. We've been here several times and always walk away impressed. We're excited. We're flakies inside. Tio Mare Perisic is the head sommelier and tonight he's arranged a 12-course meal for us paired with wine. Let's get this party started. We're in Croatia, where we mix with homemade mayonnaise and herbs. This is cuttlefish chips. Herring is really super. It's strange because initially I like this Sauvignon Blanc because it's kind of green up but not really all into this botanical you know high aromatic kind of Sauvignon Blanc. It brings out the asparagus in the wine and it gives you an extended lovely long finish to the wine. Our server Valentino keeps the courses coming while Tio Mare explains a little of his philosophy when it comes to guests. To pour foreign wines to our people and Croatian wines to visitors. The deep fried scampi paired with an orange wine called Super Slav from our friend Primo Slav Suntaki shows strong. This is a super pairing because it really gives a mainframe a big mint palette to the wine and it was a freak that it's going to be a little bit of this bitter finish because of the celery and the dish. None at all. The finish is really clean, fresh. It's like tasting green peas straight up in the blender. Then the risotto comes. Love a good nasi raita Mount Vazio. Savory. This is the best traditional screening risotto that I've had in Croatia. Monkfish is prepared in the olive oil. In the top is punk joy. Jerusalem artichoke cream, kora and shea tomato cream. I like it when they're able to take such a simple neutral flavored ingredient but they do it so well. They show cooking technique in the final product and they give a twist of flavor to it. It's like in the places hopping but we still have more. Young potato prepared in the in the dark fat. What kind of pig you said it is again? Look at this glistening white pig. What do you think about the pig? Healthy pig. Healthy free range pig. Tim Iyer has put together quite the wine list complete with a big selection of champagne and other goodies from inside and outside Croatia. A little Macvanda Juga, heaven cheese and we are stuffed to the gills. In the morning we make the two hour drive east to Slavonia. Most wine geeks know about Slavonian oak. Many don't realize that Slavonia is actually a wine region in Croatia with a long history of wine production. The Cistercian monks established a cellar in Kutievo during the 13th century and it still produces wine today. Grašavina also known as Velsi Riesling or Atayi Riesling is the main grape in Kutievo. There's even a Grašavina square in the center of town. We're here to visit a friend and a fabulous small producer called Santaki. Krunoslav Santaki and his brother Antun run a small guest house and winery located on Grašavina square. We've been here before but this is the first time that we're visiting Krunoslav's vineyards. Santaki does produce a juicy white from Grašavina but Krunoslav has made waves with his reds from Cabernet Franck and Pinot Noir. The Kutievo is recognized by French monks at 13th century so they know what they are doing and the tradition goes back 800 years ago. I like Cabernet Franck in the vineyard because I can grow it fully organically every season, every vintage. I think it found its home here in Slavonia. It's about Slavonia and Kutievo and nothing special about me. We return to the cellar and get ready for dinner. Really? The Santaki guest house is one of the few accommodation options in Kutievo. It's even mentioned in Fodor's grad to Croatia. Tonight Antun is cooking us up a feast from Slavonian port. Krunoslav cracks open an older bottle of this popular Pinot Noir for dinner. It's a hard to find bottle that's a huge hit amongst the Croat wine crowd. We're also tasting older vintages of the Santaki Grašavina which takes Serene by surprise. It's really good. It has this nice gasoline smell and then you get the varietal sliced almond kind of smell on the nose as well because of the H8 gains a little bit of shoulder and weight and broadness. It's very enjoyable. To me it's still fresh wine, fresh wine style, lighter style but with a lot of complexity. That is why Grašavina is a national variety. In toughest year we get wine like this. Say hi. Breakfast is one of the best things about staying at Santaki guest house. In the morning we find fresh preserved meat called Kutun at our table. It's spicy and goes great with the other local produce in addition to freshly baked cookies. After breakfast we head to Eninghi winery. Mr. Ivan Eninghi was the first to privately bottle wine in Croatia. Because of the quality of his wines Mr. Eninghi had his own label during the socialist period of Yugoslavia when private wineries were not legal. Ivan is over 80 years old but still does most of the work in the cellar in the vineyard. He only has a few people helping him produce wine from over 50 hectares of vineyards which are certified organic. He usually doesn't do wine visits with guests so we're soaking up the opportunity to taste tank and barrel samples with him. Ivan designed the cellar himself which holds barrels for his top wines named Venje. Both the Venje White and Venje Red are blends of five different grapes. After more tanks sample tasting Ivan warms up to us and invites us inside to taste a few archive wines. First up is a Riesling. Riesling from 1990. 28 years. What do you think? It's beautiful and next is Mr. Eninghi's first Venje White from 1998. It won the best of show regional trophy at the Decanter World Wine Awards in 2008. This was perhaps the first Croatian wine in the modern area to receive such high recognition and it's still showing well today. There's a reason that the Cistercian monks decided to plant vines here. Slavonia, especially the areas around Kutyevo, is fantastic for all types of agriculture. All this potential isn't fully realized. It remains one of the poorest areas in Croatia. Some say that as much as a busload of people leave Slavonia every day, a few of the wineries are working on creating jobs in hopes to keep young people in the region. One of these producers is Kraut Thacker who has 45 full-time employees. Vlado Kraut Thacker was a winemaker at Kutyevo cellars before leaving in the 90s to start his own project. He started with less than a hectare of vineyards and today produces over 600,000 bottles of wine per year. The name Kraut Thacker has become a stamp of high quality in Croatia. It's Sunday when we arrive, but Vlado's daughter Martina and her husband Ivan are kind enough to open the cellar and tasting room, which boasts beautiful views over Kutyevo. Kraut Thacker became famous by producing Grasjevina and they bottle several different wines from the grape, including their top example from the Mitrovac Vineyard. It has like gives it more dimension, makes it smarter, it makes the wine smarter, not just you know mineral, not just like asparagus and pungent. These days Martina has taken over the winemaking duties from her father, but he still has a stamp on the winery, including the Kuvlake wine. They're orange wines inspired by Vlado's trip to the country of Georgia a few years ago. The latest vintage of Grasjevina, just one of gold medal of the decanter world wine awards. Martina and Ivan keep the wines flowing. Kraut Thacker may have started out producing white wines, but they make outstanding reds and sweet wines too. We're especially fond of the Sera in addition to their mercs, a blend of Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon. We visited Kraut Thacker before and every time it seems like we taste over 30 wines, an all or of high quality. When you see a Kraut Thacker wine on the shelf, you can be assured of good wine inside the bottle. Kutievo cellars has the largest vineyard holdings in Slovenia. Their cellar was set up by the monks in the 13th century. Their Grasjevina bottling is always of high quality. There are a number of other notable producers in the area, including Ajic, Perak, Ferovino, and Orojovica. Today we don't have the time to visit them all. We're stopping at one of the newest projects in the region. Businessman Josip Galic has just finished his brand new winery across the street from Kutievo cellars. It's a modern, sleek facility designed to bring jobs and tourists back to Slovenia. We think the interior looks like a space ship. The building is a 4 million euro investment, and half of that went into the winemaking equipment. You won't find many facilities like this in Croatia. Galic produces squeaky clean wines from Grasjevina and other international varieties. Shirin is fond of the two new sparkling wines that are set to be released later this year. I think both wines, they have very good balance, good dosage, good acidity, nice fruit likeness, flavors. The bubbles are quite vigorous and persistent. I mean, we didn't taste it for a long time, but in the mouth it's quite vigorous. And I like that because the bubbles are fine. It gives a certain likeness to this wine, has marked all the points that a good champagne is about. All good sparkling is about the structure, the likenessness, the persistence, the energy in the mouth, and most importantly, balance, balance, balance. Every time we come to Slovenia, the trip is too short. Now we have to move on to the Croatian uplands. In the next episode, we move more than 100 kilometers up north of Zagreb and visit the continental part of the country. Here, you will find several organic wine producers and an award-winning ice wine producer. In this episode, we also visit a wellness spa resort and spot-like excellent places to wine and dine. Wow. It's really good. If you would like to learn more about Croatian and Croatian wine, keep a look out for our next episode and check out our book, Cracking Croatian Wine.