 It's face-off time again! We're gonna pit a Croatian wine versus a wine from the Southern Roman France. Check it out in this video. Hello! Welcome back to Exotic Wine Travel. I am your host, Matthew Horky. Hi, I'm Shereen Time. We are bringing back the face-off. We used to do face-offs when we first started this channel. We're gonna do that with two wines here today. We're coming from Dalmatia, Croatia. It's in the middle of the summer. It's beautiful out. We're at this beautiful villa, the Villa Lavanda on the coast of Croatia. I'll link it up in the description box, but that's not what this is all about. This is about two wines available in the U.S. and available worldwide for, oh, this is, this is available in the U.S. only, about the same price point, about 20 U.S. dollars. So, both Mediterranean reds, I wanted to see kind of what they taste like in comparison. The first we have is Plovac Mali from Camarna, and the second is a Cote de Rhone from the South of France. What do you want to say about Camarna? Well, it is the youngest wine region in Croatia. I think it was established in 2013. And what's interesting, it is considered a wholly certified wine region in Croatia. It's relatively small as well, because there are only four, five wine producers over there. But on top of that, there are a few other growers and corporates there. It's all organic, right? Yes, all organic. Got you. So, I'm not sure if all the growers are organic. I know that the five main producers are organic. So, Camarna 7, 7 stands for the seven growers coming together to produce this wine. So, I'm excited about tasting it. And we also have a Cote de Rhone from a very good chef of the pot producer that we're familiar with. Let's get started. Well, you want to taste the younger Cote de Rhone first or the Plovac Mali first? I would say go for Cote de Rhone, because if you know Plovac Mali, it tends to be more tannic, more ripe than Cote de Rhone, in fact. If you don't know what Plovac Mali is, don't worry, we're describing the box. Okay, we'll start with the Chateau Montibor Cote de Rhone 2018. This is Grenache, Syrah, Mourvedre, and Cine. So, this is a tiny producer in Chateau de Pop, makes a wonderful Chateau de Pop. You love them, right? I love them, yeah. They are considered more traditional in style, all right? More leathery, kind of more old school. You know what I kind of find is I've really enjoyed Cote de Rhone from Chateau de Pop producer. So, this is a hot tip. If you're looking at Cote de Rhone, a lot of Cote de Rhone's can be pretty thin sometimes, pretty cheap, not super exciting. But Chateau de Pop has some of the lowest yields in France. So, the wines are concentrated. Sometimes it's a bit much for people like Chateau de Pop, but for Cote de Rhone, I think it fits well. So, ask your retailer if you're looking at Cote de Rhone, hey, does this producer make Chateau de Pop as well? You're excited already? Yeah, I was listening to you, but I was also quite distracted by the smell of this wine. It's quite complex for a Cote de Rhone. It's not a typical Cote de Rhone smell. I also really like Cinso to be added to a blend, either in Cote de Rhone or even in Chateau de Pop as well, because I really think that Cinso has a spice box quality and fruitiness that is quite distinct. This actually is in their style, Chateau de Pop. So, think leathery, think smoky leathery. Although, I think this wine is only done in concrete. Oh, you like our Strawberry Red Plum? What else you do? Quite a lot of cherry and fresh quanginas as well to wear them back. So, you approve? Yeah, yeah. What do you say? I'm really, I don't like a lot of sorry, but I don't like a lot of Southern Rhone wines in general, right, because they're overwrite for me. So, I always look for a sense of freshness and I do find freshness in this wine. Oh, fresh acidity, thick raspberries, sour cherry, strawberry, a little bit of meat notes, some pepper, some pretty grippy tans for Cote de Rhone. But I still, that spice box, like I said earlier, it really shows up here. Tenants are there, but not too dry. I would say just a little bit firm, but it's not Estringent Tenants. Wow, this is impressive. To me, it's really impressive wine. I think at that price of the $20, wow. I would be I don't actually, sorry. Go ahead. You go ahead. I actually don't get the Plaminas I typically get from a lot of Cote de Rhone. So again, pulling back on the Plaminas to show a lot of freshness. I'm in the already in like the kind of the $89.90 range after I read through a little bit more. This is excellent Cote de Rhone, right? And I think it has quite a bit of aging potential. So, awesome. So, this is already highly recommended. Let's move on here, shall we? Don't worry, we can trick you later. So, we have another wine. This is brought in by Croatia Premium Wine Imports, US exclusive. I know this is $19.99. I think this can be found anywhere from 18 to 20 something dollars in the US, probably in Europe, maybe 15 euros. This is the Kamarna 7, Plovac Mali 2016, a grape that Shireen loves. Off-shrink of the original Zinfandel, known as Sordian Kastelensky or Trimadreg and the great Dobracic. Why, Plovac Mali is a Mediterranean red. Why do you love Plovac so much? It's a very, it's very strong in tenants. Of course, it's very important. It becomes a challenge that wine makers have to pull back on the tenants, but I really like the tannic structure. It has freshness, but at the same time, I think the key problem is it can be override. A lot of times it shows too much bruce fruit flavor, but I love it mostly because it's a very tannic wine, but with grapefruit freshness to it. It's, for a Mediterranean, I don't think dark fruit, big dark fruit, think more red fruit. And the strawberry and rose petal, his rose petal comes out, a little smoke as well. So Komana area is about 200 meters above the sea level, limestone, predominantly limestone soil. We're looking at very warm wine region over there. However, I do find that the Plovac Mali from Komana tends to be actually more floral and softer. Yeah, it's very interesting to see. Good because the vines are young too as well. It's a southeast thing. Amazing vineyard. It's beautiful. Right on the coast, tumble down the sea. You see the islands of the background. Let's taste this already. You're a fan already. Very typical Plovac Mali, but much lighter towards the grapefruit. You do get a little bit of bruisiness on the palate. Maybe like a little bit of this bruised strawberry, but we're not going into that whole like compote kind of quality. This is pretty good. I mean, wow, this is a blend of seven producers made the U.S. market kind of introduced Komana. Strawberries, gari, kind of tiny rosemary, red petal, sorry, rose petal. The tans are kind of under control for Plovac. Plovac's can sometimes hurt my face off, right? Anything else? I think the tannins, this one is more astringent tannin. Whereas this one is more firm tannin. So I think this, a lot of people will find this more, the tannin's stronger, but at the same time, it creates a very nice long end palate. It leads the flavor to the very end. It's such a beautiful idea, right? Like one wine to represent a young wine region. In my opinion, right, the Côte de Rôte is way easier to drink. You will appeal to a lot more palate, but if you taste this wine blind, I can almost assure you that the Plovac Mali will leave a stronger impression. Can I put this into your, I'm going to compare. I mean, I'm strict, I'm strictly, I defend them on the score. I'm like 90 plus on this wine already. I think it's, I think it's really, really good. I want to compare to the Côte de Rôte. And Met does not like, I would say Met is not partial to Plovac Mali. Both Mediterranean, I thought they would be similar. This has more garigi notes. This has more leathery notes type deal. So I think, I think it would be flavor profile maybe similar, but structurally obviously this would be more lean. I can't decide. These are both, if it's a face off, which one are you back in? It depends, you know, if I want the safe choice to introduce to people, I would take the Côte de Rôte. But if I want to impress, if I want to surprise people, like one gig, if I go for one gig dinner, I will take the Plovac Mali. And profile wise is actually quite different. Both have grapefruit, but like you said just now, I saw this is more towards a spice area, whereas this is more garig, dried up kind of style. I was expecting for me this to blow this out of the water for me, because that's what I prefer. I'm almost, it's almost splitting hairs here. I'm like at a draw. I like both of the wines actually quite a bit. Sorry, I'm just happy. I really stand for Plovac Mali. So guys, check it out. I'll put the link to Croatian Premium Wine and Ports there. You can find this on Wine Searcher. Check out, check it out. Yeah, so we'll have more videos coming here from Villa Lavanda. We also have actually a vlog coming up about the producers of Camarno. So you have to check it out. Anything else you want to hear? That will be all. Drink adventurously. Keep trying new wine region and new wine grapes. So guys, if you like this channel, if you like this channel, if you like this video, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. Exactly quite travel and I will see you at an next episode. Hello, thanks for watching. Hey, you made it to the end. Make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel. Click the bell so you know when new videos are out. If you like content like this, check out our Patreon page where you get some behind the scenes exclusive content. Thanks for watching. Cheers. Cheers.