The Istrian Wines
Author: Ivica Ivanišević
As a man of certain age—which, naturally, is a recommendation in the erotic sense, not a handicap—I’ve been through the wringer and, most importantly, through colander. Early on, I learned to be wary of the generosity of my countrymen. When a dear man would invite me to a soirée in his charming homeland, and threaten me with homemade wine from his grandfather’s vineyard and his father’s cellar, which looked like an unusual unplastered garage, my legs would go weak with dread. I knew what that meant: I’d have to drink a glass, two, three, and then a few more ‘for the road’— of a liquid that leaves scars on both liver and soul—all the while praising two great lineages: the vine’s and the host’s. The first, for giving us magnificent fruit, and the second, for the long, invaluable tradition of turning grapes into a nectar that is truly one of a kind.
It’s astonishing how much spirits our people have consumed, all the while deeply convinced they were indulging in unmatched wines. The culprit, of course, is a slavish devotion to ancestral heritage. ‘If it was good enough for my father, it’s good enough for me,’ mused our local agrosophists, oblivious to the fact that every time they invoked the word ‘otac,’ (father) they were, in fact, creating an anagram thereof: ‘ocat’ (vinegar). Who knows how long we would have continued adhering to this view, had the first Istrian—whose identity, unfortunately, remains unknown to this day—not realized that other people, like French or Italians, have grandfathers, too. And it wouldn’t hurt, he thought, to see what their traditions might teach us.
The first person who looked beyond the borders of his vineyard—and even beyond the country—quickly realized that his foreign colleagues viewed heritage and customs differently than we do. While appreciating everything their fathers and grandfathers had achieved, they do not accept this unconditionally, for they respect the undeniable insights of science just as much, if not more. This realization, which seems obvious and even trivial today, was revolutionary in the early 1990s. It was so unexpected and bold that some people, especially in the jovial region I come from, kept sneering for a good decade or more at the ungrateful Istrian ‘revolutionaries’ who, as they said, spat on their grandfathers by bottling perfumed wines that catered to the tastes of fussy foreigners.
Everything I learned about Istrian wines up to that point was owed to my student days, when friends would talk me into stopping by the Istrian Club in Zagreb for a drink, or when an acquaintance would announce he had a bottle or two of homemade, ‘certified’ wine from the peninsula. It’s no wonder that, based on such limited knowledge, I concluded that Istrians are making only two types of wine: the red one, called teran, with hallucinogenic properties that cause permanent damage to the cerebral cortex, and the white one, called malvazija, which could only bring joy to dirty windows.
On my personal scale of wine horrors, Istrian wines didn’t rank particularly high. And how could they, considering those dreadful delanec, cviček, and direktor wines from Zagorje, Prigorje, and Podravina—wines that might have been in demand only during the battles of Verdun or the Somme, when both sides ran out of mustard gas. Still, I regarded teran and malvazija, and by extension, Istria itself, as concepts best kept at a respectful distance.
And so came the nineties. Just like in the song Osamdesete (‘The Eighties’) by Daleka Obala, ‘something finally started, something shifted.’ We in the southern provinces were the first to hear about this; the bottles themselves arrived a bit later. In fact, this took so long that we had to go to them. Like all narrow-minded provincials, we showed up armed with doubts and prejudices. As we raised the first glass to our lips, we were silently chanting a local patriotic mantra: ‘As if Istrian wine could ever compare to the Dalmatian ones! Give me a break!’ We could refer to Daleka Obala’s song once again, this time with a twist: ‘Many doubters said Istria wouldn’t make it.’ But the moment we set the glass back on the table, we were already converted. We returned home not as defenders of any territory, but as defenders of terroir, pledging to uphold Istria as the land we would swear by, one we would never stray from.
It’s not just that teran and malvazija have disappeared from the list of deadly substances banned by the Geneva Convention and found their way onto the wine lists of some world-class restaurants, even those outrageously expensive, where getting a table is as slow as waiting for an MRI in Croatia. Istria has opened up to other varieties, too—sauvignon, merlot, chardonnay, pinot, shiraz, and their unique blends flooded the market, first the domestic one, and then the ones far beyond the borders. Thanks to its winemakers, one peninsula has transformed its own identity and self-image while also making a significant impact on other Croatian regions, where enthusiastic oenophiles have been inspired to follow Istria’s lead.
Commemorating the sacrifice and heroism of the pilots who fought in the Battle of Britain, Winston Churchill uttered the famous sentence: ‘Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.’ It may sound a bit inappropriate, but I can’t help feeling that this thought could also apply to the Istrian winemakers—a handful of hardworking, visionary people transforming their homeland and making a profound influence on their colleagues in other parts of the country, who have followed and continue to follow their example.
Ladies and gentlemen, I’ll stop here, as I believe that three pages, like three deciliters, are neither too little nor too much; it strikes a dignified and fitting balance. Cheers!
