Why Zinfandel Lovers Should Head to Croatia

Encouraged by the excellent American – Croatian relations, the wonderful friends and guests that  we meet daily at our seaside, we decided to share the story of Zinfandel as it became an inexhaustible topic of nightly discussions for boaters and all wine lovers.

Tribidrag is an old and almost forgotten indigenous Croatian wine variety, which in recent years has been revived thanks to the reputation of American Zinfandel, which has an almost cult status in the USA. In the US, Zinfandel is the third most widely distributed wine variety on 200,000 ha, produced by more than 250 winemakers and bottled in more than 4,800 different labels. Croatia currently has about 65,000 ha planted with the indigenous Tribidrag or Crljenak wine variety.

Zinfandel Origins

Back in 2001, Americans initiated the procedure to declare Zinfandel an American indigenous variety. But that year, the homeland of Zinfandel was found in Dalmatia. The first grapevines of Zinfandel in Europe were found in the old vineyard of Ivica Radunic, in Kaštela, and  they called it the red grape of Kaštela.

Dr. Carole Meredith, Professor at the University of California at Davis, after years of research into the origins of the most popular American grape variety, confirmed that Italian Primitivo was genetically identical to Zinfandel and that Croatian Plavac mali was genetically related to Zinfandel.

However, her work had invited collaboration with Croatian viticultural researchers, and after many a trek through the vineyards of the beautiful Dalmatian coast and its rocky islands, they discovered an ancient and almost extinct variety in the Kaštela near Split, called Crljenak Kaštelanski (literally “red grape of Kaštela”).

Soon will be discovered that besides the name Crljenak kastelanski, this old variety has several others: Pribidrag in Omis area, Kratosija in Montenegro and Tribidrag, as the oldest and most widespread name used for this then economically important variety in Dalmatia, 15th century.

Flavours

The primary flavors of Zinfandel are  blueberry, black pepper, cherry, plum, boysenberry, cranberry, and licorice. When you taste Zinfandel it often explodes with candied fruitiness followed by spice and often a tobacco-like smoky finish. And this  wine is also best paired with the obvious—meat, like beef or duck—along with the traditional meal pašticada (beef cooked with plums in red wine).