Matosevic Alba Malvazija Istarska, Istria Croatia 2016 (£15.99, Latitude)
If you’re looking for distinctive, food-friendly wines made from unusual grapes by thoughtful winemakers in beautiful places, then few places match Slovenia and Croatia. That they’re still criminally under-represented in the UK says more about us than them. In the supermarkets, you can find just a handful from either country, with M&S’s peachy Golden Valley Grasevina 2016 (£10) doing a sterling job of representing Croatia’s Slavonija region, and Puklavec & Friends Sauvignon Blanc Pinot Grigio 2016 a pristine Slovene from the Jerusalem region at Waitrose (£6.49). For more stars of these vibrant wine cultures you’ll have to hunt online or in your local independent, home to beauties such as Matosevic’s gloriously floral and invigorating malvazija.
Kozlovic Istria Teran Croatia 2016 (£12.96, Corking Wines; Novel Wines)
Malvazija is at its best in the Croatian part of Istria, the peninsular that juts out into the Adriatic. It makes wines that have the elusive ability of combining ripe summery stone fruit, citrus, herb and fennel-like greenness – a combination you find in Kozlovic’s excellent example (Kozlovic Malvazija Istrana 2016; £14.95, Novel Wines) which, like all the best malvazija, goes well with fish. There’s a similar briskness to red wines made from the teran grape variety which is widely planted in both Croatian and Slovenian Istria (and northeast Italy, where it’s known as refosco), a plum-skin tartness and raspberry succulence found in both Kozlovic’s example and the very pure Cotar Teran 2014 (£23.37, Tannico), from Slovenia’s Kras region just north of Trieste.
Burja Zelen, Vipavska Dolina Slovenia 2016 (£17.40, Les Caves)
Further south, Croatia is also home to red wines that have more in common with southern than northern Italy, with the Dalmatian coast and islands such as Hvar using the local plavac mali grape for lushly fruited, dark cherry and chocolate-flavoured wines, such as Badel Plavac Mali 2015 (£13, Croatian Fine Wines) from the Peljesac peninsular. Slovenia, meanwhile, is more celebrated for its whites, not least in the Brda region across the border with Italy’s Collio, where the rebula grape (ribolla giala on the Italian side) is fashioned by Marjan Simcic into a dry white that is by turns fruity, savoury and zesty (Marjan Simcic Ribolla, Brda 2016; £15.99, Wine Library). To the west, meanwhile, in the Vipava valley, the rare zelen grape is the basis of the tiny family-run Burja estate’s utterly delightful, graceful dry white.
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