 to exotic wine travel. I'm your host Matthew Horkey and we have a very special guest on the show today. So somebody that Sherry and I have been wanting to meet for a long time. So for you wine nerds you probably should know who is sitting right next to me for those of you don't know. I have a columnist for Decanter, contributing editor to the world of fine wines, financial times, your co-chair of Decanter World Wine Awards, correct? Vice President of Decanter World Wine Awards Asia, author of more than 13 wine books. We have Andrew Jefford. Thank you so much for being on the show. I really appreciate it. Great to be here with you Matthew. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Most wine geeks know who you are, but for those that don't you want to give a little kind of brief intro about yourself, your wine history, anything that you think you should know? Yeah well you know I've been on the wine trail like you are very much nowadays for about 30 years. So you pick up a little bit as you go and you know I've been lucky enough to have the chance to turn that into a lot of writing down the years which I've really enjoyed doing. I love writing. Some of it is in books, most of it has been in journalism and here we are. Here we are today in Croatia. For people that know you live in Europe, right? Yeah I live near Montpellier in France. So really the world of fine wine. So you know it's awesome. We're here actually in Kutievo in Slovenia. We're actually Kutievo sellers tasting, we just tasted some archive wines back to the 60s even. You want to talk about this is your first time in Croatia. What was your familiarity with Croatian wine before you even got here? Well you know in recent years particularly in the Cantor world wine awards we've been coming across some very interesting wines out of Croatia, the Malvasias out of Istria and so on. And I just got my curiosity going and I'm always looking for you know I write columns so I have to keep the variety up. I have to keep going to new places and discovering new things and passing that on. So it seemed like a great opportunity to come over here. I'd like that you're enthused about coming over here. Yeah absolutely. You know some really very interesting wines coming out of Croatia in recent years and we I mean we you know people outside Croatia don't know those so well yet. A lot to discover and so now to be here in the country and you know get some feel for the actual physical texture of the place. It's wonderful too. Yeah. As well as the wines. I mean we haven't actually Andrew hasn't been to Istria. He'll be he'll be going over there tomorrow afternoon but we did sit down over a couple of days tasted through a lot of wines from the uplands from Slovenia from Dalmatia. You also you obviously here in Slovenia get to visit. Yeah. What's your overall impression from what you've tasted? Yeah. Yeah. Well you know Croatia is the physical texture of Croatia is quite is interesting. It's it's it's a long stretched out bent curved round sort of country and it goes through many different climate zones too. So you would expect there to be considerable variety within the wines and in fact that is what that's what we found in the tasting over the last couple of days. So you have everything from sort of super light and graceful white wines through more much more structured white wines from the Mediterranean zone let's say and then you have these really very interesting red wines very typically classical European red wines in some ways you know people who are new to them might find them a little bit difficult because they're quite rich in tannin and quite structured and quite firm and often very characterful in their profiles but that's the sort of wine I like you know I like tannin I like wine with tannin I like wine that goes with food for me the tannins are very important because somehow inside the tannin of all great red wine is the profundity the the real depth the the really interesting things are sort of hidden inside the tannins they can seem a bit difficult when you first come across them as a new drinker but when you know the more time you pass with them the more you understand them and more profoundly interesting that side of the flavor actually is I think so I was really thrilled to discover quite a lot of wines like that yesterday. You liked in particular a few great varieties can you name off the top of your head things that stuck it still out of my mind? Well we were just talking about you know the reds obviously Plavacimali is you know distinctive signature red from Dalmatia and that that was interesting but for example you know here today in Slavonia which is the other end of Croatia you know we've been tasting some Cabernets and Merlos you know international varieties and actually you can see that they also have structure then they're not simple light and fruity wines at all there they have a different profile because this is a different place it's a not necessarily a distinctly cooler place but certainly a much greener sort of place slightly higher altitude and set well away from the Adriatic Sea so a very different style to them a different weight but at the same time there is that kind of structured firmness there as well. I know that you were yesterday you were really fond of Plavacimali and it's a love it kind of Haiti grape for those of you watch you know that Sharina loves it I'm a little bit more lukewarm on it what was it that intrigued you so much about that variety? Well you know it is it's really the the the tannic structure and the nature of the fruit and when we talk about the nature of the fruit you know you're really getting towards the thing that makes the variety unique actually because it's we were searching around afterwards for for other varieties to try and describe it in terms of in order to to kind of pass on some information about it of course every great variety really is itself so you have to come you have to taste it otherwise you'll never really understand what it is but for me it wasn't sometimes analogies have been made with Nebbiolo but it wasn't particularly like Nebbiolo because what you have with great Nebbiolo is yes it is tannic depends slightly how it's aged but it can be aged to silky smoothness but in principle it's a tannic grape variety but there are sort of tannins that you don't necessarily feel on the side of your tongue it's further back in the throat actually very often and the tannic structure in a Nebbiolo is often quite almost separate from quite vivid acid structure as well so there's a sort of a kind of bipolar tension in the wine that you don't get at all in Plovac Mali. Plovac Mali for me was much more like really great Merlot can be tannic from Pomeroy-Santa-Medium right back Bordeaux not so much elsewhere but certainly in those places a little bit in Tuscany as well but to me that the tannins of the Plovac Mali are a little bit more like that and then some another great variety we were thinking about you know to compare it with Vesaparavi from Georgia so sort of somewhere between those two poles there is this interesting unique grape variety here on the Adriatic Coast which is doing something really quite distinguished and noble serious wine for sure. That's quite true here I'm the one that made the Nebbiolo comparison and unfortunately nothing in the tasting tasted like that shows how green I am but anyways it's all about the discussion you know you know I'm not saying I'm right but that's just the way I perceived it yesterday and then the other thing we noticed yesterday we had a chance to look at some older wines yes and you know you can see how well it ages you know I had a chance to do some historic tasting of Saperavi at the end of last year out in Georgia and I was very surprised by how quickly the Georgian Saperavi can modulate it changes and transforms and the tannins actually soften out quite remarkably swiftly whereas Plovac Mali they hang around they don't disappear and then of course another variety that made us think of was Zinou Mavrou from Greece so you know lots of these interesting comparisons to make. So what do you see you actually surprised me with your enthusiasm with some of the wines overall and quality kind of what do you see a lot of people don't know that Croatia even makes wines are considered to be Eastern Europe Eastern black. How do you compare the quality in terms of you know some of the more renowned wine regions around the world? Well you know we've talked mainly about red wine so far but actually Croatia is mainly I believe white wine and that you know there are these very distinctive unique varieties for white wine too you know here we are in Slovenia so we've been tasting Gresovina which is sometimes it goes by other names elsewhere Belcheri sling and Riesling Italico and so on and you know I remember when I was a little boy just discovering wine 35 40 years ago back in those days my dad used to buy bottles of I think it came out of Serbia sort of Lasky Riesling which was a very kind of simple fresh quaffing white and to discover just how actually serious and good that can be in the right place and this is obviously the right place for it was a real eye-opener so that's that's been one thing obviously that these extraordinary Malvasias from Istria are very very interesting that's a you know a structured white variety it doesn't it's not fresh it's not green it's not planty it's not sappy in the same way that the Gresovina is it's you know it's a broader structure almost more lemony more floral but you know always broad and structured we actually haven't got to Istria yet we're going there you know the next couple of days so I'll be able to describe it a little bit better than probably but then the other interesting one that we came across yesterday was POSSIP POSSIP POSSIP POSSIP yep POSSIP like full ship okay which is from down in Dalmatia again and you know made in a variety of styles but some of the contemporary styles are actually you know shockingly good in terms of fragrance and freshness and intrigue and sappiness as a density there and you know when I think how much sort of second-rate Sauvignon Blanc there is floating around the world you know you have a wine like that which is really noble and profound and interesting and shockingly good in some ways way better than a lot of you know the trivial Sauvignon that people are coughing yeah or the sort of throw away Pino Grigio's and so on you know it just seems such a shame that the wines like this has yet underappreciated it will come but for the time being the world doesn't know about these wines and there are these pressures just waiting there to be discovered that's right that's what we're all about so what do you think that of what only Croatia you know we cover a lot of a lot of Eastern Europe and a lot of odd countries even yeah these countries need to do to kind of position themselves get their wines more known to the outside world well you know the best thing they can do is the thing that all the best people in those countries are doing at the moment which is simply make the best wine you can because the world you know the world is very mobile now they're people like you traveling around people like me traveling around you know I'm involved in wine education more and more so nowadays people are hugely hungry to learn about wine wine tourism is booming you know people want to go out and discover things so that the best thing that that all the winemakers can do in those locations is just refine their art really think seriously about what they're doing do it well create something beautiful and then people will find their way to you I'm sure you know I don't I don't think you have to necessarily stress yourself out to have a kind of enormous marketing campaign and this unless you really have trouble selling enough to make a living which I don't think anybody in Croatia does if you make good wine in Croatia you will make a living maybe in Moldova it's a bit different I don't know but anyway in a country like Croatia probably Georgia nowadays as well certainly in Slovenia countries like that you know people now appreciate the quality of the wine that's to be found in these places and people are ready to beat a path to their door and you know sommelier help a lot you know sommelier you know want to discover new things all the time they taste well they're thinking about wine and food the whole time so they're not they're not hidebound in the way they used to be in fact almost the opposite they've almost become fashion crayons but but at least that you know that the whole quest for for something that's fashionable and interesting is bringing these kind of wines to the fore as well as the son of the more exaggeratedly fashionable things you know I find it funny even though we can't straight obviously we we covered right about all these new fashionable things I love everybody goes away from some of the classics and now you can go like in Bordeaux can coin and grab great wine for peanuts not at the top yeah what do you what do you see for the last question kind of what you've seen it from afar judging it you know being the chair the decanter world wine awards you know seeing countries like Croatia others Eastern European countries get more and more metals and now you've been here you've tasted you've smelled you've seen firsthand what do you what do you kind of foresee for Croatia maybe Eastern Europe at large going forward yeah well you know as long as the world keeps on a steady prosperous course which is never certain but let's hope it is that's the way things are going to pan out I foresee a you know very bright future for these countries because you know they're not they're not really up against the wall as far as climate change is concerned there's a fair amount of latitude here still you know we're here in in Slovenia it's been pouring with rain for three days in mid to late June and you know there's no problem of drought here for example at the moment quite the opposite yeah so so you know they can sort of I don't want to say relax nobody can relax like climate change but maybe they're a little bit less threatened by than than the climate that by climate change and some of the more extreme Southern Hemisphere locations for example and you know they have people want authentic products people want products with a history with a story with a sense of place to them with this famous sense of terroir that people talk about and these wines and these places have all that in spades so you know they've got an awful lot of they've got an awful lot of credit they've got an awful lot to offer that the world wants so they just have to keep refining their art as I say keep presenting it in an intelligible way keep you know not just working at the winemaking but working at the packaging and the design and the conceptualization and the storytelling because the storytelling is immensely important too you know no wine should ever go to market without a back label the back label is a chance to tell your story you know and tell it directly to the community to the consumer as they're drinking the wine so as long as they do all of those things I had I think they have a very bright future well thank thank you so I know we'd love to sit there and talk for hours but we're I have to cut you have you're busy man so thank you so much really people can find your work on decanter I'll put your website at Andrew Jefford comm any world of fine wine correct world of fine wine absolutely every three months and well there's a book called Andrew Jeffords wine course if you want to have an introductory book on wine I'll put that as I'll put that in the description box too so thank you so much you're welcome thank you guys you know if you want to learn more about Croatian wine I'll put the link to our book actually in the video too and if you like this video please subscribe to our YouTube channel exotic wine travel and we will see you at the next episode