Wine Tasting in Plastovo

In this morning’s post about the first part of a tour I went on today out of Split, Croatia, I teased you (assuming you read it) with an optional afternoon activity that I didn’t know was optional when I booked the tour. The tour primarily went to Krka National Park. But that was just the morning. In that earlier post, I refused to give any spoilers as to the afternoon activity. All can now revealed.

In the afternoon, the tour took us to the small village of Plastovo. Its population consists of only 100 people and I don’t know how many non-human animals. I didn’t see any non-human animals. So possibly not many.

Despite being such a small village, it has three wineries. I bet it’s a happy little place.

A town of only 100 people, but three wineries. What do you think the afternoon activity was? I’ll give you a hint. It’s in the title of this post.

Anyone? Anyone? Beuller?

That’s right. A wine tasing. Or, if I hadn’t already had wine when I typed this, a wine tasting. A wine tasing would be something completely different.

But before I get into that, I left off this morning talking about lunch in the town of Skradin. I had about twenty minutes after lunch before the bus left for the wine tasting. I used that time to walk around a bit in Skradin.

It’s a very handsome town. Low-rise buildings painted in pastel hues, and a few bare stone buildings, line the main street. A decent portion of that main street is for pedestrians only.

As I put together this post, I discovered that I forgot to take any pictures of the street. That’s a shame, I thought it was very warm and welcoming.

Skradin also has at least a couple of modest churches and a cute clock tower. I remembered to take a picture of the latter. It’s somewhere nearby on this page.

Wine Tasting

The tasting happened at a small winery (everything is small in Plastovo) called Sladic Wine.

I sat at a table with six people on the other side of the table and five on mine. When you travel solo you have to expect a little oddness.

After we sat down, one of the people at the table asked everyone where they were from. The majority were Americans.

When I said I was Canadian, the American who did the residency questioning said, “Oh, wow, I’ve been trying to talk my father into taking out Canadian citizenship. His parents were Canadian.”

I then asked why she wanted her father to take out Canadian citizenship.

“In case we have to flee the States.”

A strongly worded, multi-person rant against Donald Trump then ensued. I took an immediate liking to those people.

Love of Wine Tasting

Getting back to the wine tasting, I should start by saying I love wine tastings. They provide me with opportunities to exercise my wine-snob-mocking proclivities.

Wine Tasting Leader: This is a very elegant wine.

Me (only in my head): Elegant? Damn. I should have dressed better.

WTL: As you roll the wine over your tongue, notice the hints of grapefruit.

M (oimh): Really? Can you give me another hint? I’m not getting it.

WTL: You can really taste the terroir in this particular wine.

M (oimh): I’ve never tasted terroir. How the heck would I know if I’m tasting it? For that matter, has the WTL tasted earth, topology, and climate? How does one go about that and why?

Sladic Wine

To be fair, the above dialogue is mostly fiction. The person from the winery didn’t give us a lot of tasting notes. He mentioned the fruit tastes associated with only one of the wines. For the others, he mentioned only the grape used, the alcohol content, and the number of bottles they produce each year.

However, “elegant wine,” was indeed his phrase. If memory serves, he said it about all of the wines in the tasting. Trusting my memory after a wine tasting is not the best idea, but I’m certain he used it for at least two of the wines.

The Actual Tasting

The wine tasting started with a white wine, moved to a rosé, and then on to a red. Good. A colour progression. Something not geared to bringing out the anti-wine-snob in me. And something I can appreciate on a superficial level.

The truth is, I’m not at all a wine connoisseur. I like some wines. And I don’t like others. But don’t ask me for a fine distinction between them. And don’t ask me for my favourite. I can’t distinguish between wines with any more granularity than like or don’t like.

A Napa Tangent

That having been said, I remember a wine tasting a few years back at a winery in Napa Valley. (One or two regular readers of this journal know this story because they were there. I thought we’d have to call 911 for one of them at the tasting. But never mind that.)

That Napa Valley tasting included a flight of three wines. They all fell into my binary ranking system as likes.

Apart from the person from the winery, we were the only people in the tasting room at the end of our tasting. The Napa Valley winery person then offered to give us a taste, for no additional charge, of a wine that sells for $400 a bottle. I said it would be wasted on me because I wouldn’t be able to taste the difference. He gave me a taste anyway. I was wrong. I still couldn’t give you any tasting notes, but I did know that it was the smoothest, best-tasting wine I’ve ever had. So I’m not a 100% unrefined wine drinker. Maybe 98%.

If I could remember the name of that wine, I guess I would have a favourite. Although, I could never convince myself to spend that much money to treat myself to it.

Wait. Where was I before I veered into Napa Valley? Not anywhere near the Napa Valley, that much I remember.

I do go off on tangents sometimes, don’t I?

Back on Track

Oh, yeah. Getting back to Sladic Wine, I normally prefer red wines, but I didn’t particularly like their red. However, I did like their white and rosé wines. And I rarely drink rosés. Go figure.

But those weren’t the only wines in the tasting. We finished with a dessert wine. And that was the best of all. It wasn’t particularly sweet, but it burst with flavour.

All of the grapes in Sladic wines are grown locally. As part of the tasting, the winery also put plates of locally produced cheese on the table. The cheese, cut into small cubes with toothpicks in them, sat in a shallow pool of olive oil produced locally from locally grown olives.

There was also bread on the table to sop up the olive oil. (I don’t know if the bread was locally produced.) All of it was delicious. And, to the best of my knowledge, that’s not just the alcohol talking. But with all of that alcohol, how would I know?

And the visit to Sladic Wine wasn’t only about tasting wine, cheese, olive oil, and bread. It was also a learning experience. I learned that the Croatian equivalent of “cheers” is “živjeli!,” pronounced roughly as, “chiv-a-lee!”

Proof of Presence

By the way, I have absolute proof that I was at the wine tasting. The tour guide took pictures of each of the tables we sat at and posted them to a WhatsApp group she set up for the tour.

See that picture with the people, wine glasses raised, at a table that appears somewhere near these paragraphs? (Exactly where it appears on your screen probably depends on the size of the screen you’re using.)

Do you see that woman who looks like she’s the second last person on the right side of the table? Yeah, her. Now, take a closer look. A much, much closer look. If you do, you’ll see a line of grey hair that’s clearly not hers just barely poking above her head. That’s me. So, like I said, proof positive that I was there.

With the tasting over, the bus headed back to the town where it left the people who didn’t opt into the wine tasting, picked them up, and drove us all back to Split.

And with that, the story is over. Until tomorrow. See you then.