Pelješac is the most southern wine region of Croatia. This unspoilt peninsula is home to Dingač and Postup, the world famous wines. And to the very best oysters in Europe.
When it comes to Pelješac, nothing is quite ordinary as it might seem. Once upon a time, Pelješac regularly supplied its produces to European imperial courts. Today it’s a place where modest taverns offer royal culinary delights and whose vineyards and wineries attract world’s top wine experts and food lovers seeking to avoid usual tourist traps.
With 200 km of coast, Pelješac boasts the millennia of mariculture, with seafood making the basis of local cuisine. However, one thing stands above all: oysters. Pelješac has been famed for its oyster and mussel farms ever since the antiquity. The pristine seawaters of Malostonski Bay are known around the world for the cultivation of an almost extinct species, called European oyster. Food lovers know it’s best served freshly open with some local lemon’s juice. Incredible, unaltered taste and the scent of truly local ingredient eaten directly from the sea guarantee a dish that’s a class of its own!
All that fine seafood deserves to be paired with perfect wine. Luckily enough, this is an easy task if you’re in Pelješac. To put it simply: Croatian wine region of Pelješac is a paradise for wine lovers. Two varieties stand out and are famous around the world. The scenic slopes of peninsula’s southwest are home to an indigenous variety of Plavac Mali, called Dingač. The iconic Dingač vineyards are worthy sightseeing at any time of the year. You have to see them to believe it – so steep are those slopes that they can be worked only by hand.
Next to Dingač locality grows Postup, also a variety of Plavac Mali. Like Dingač, Postup is grown on a geographically limited and controlled location. During as much as 2500 sunny hours per year, sun rays hit the grapes of Pelješac three times – directly, reflected from the sea below and the white rocky hills above. As a result of such such conditions both Dingač and Postup grow their respective full flavours of unmistakably top-class wines.
The tour of Pelješac is not complete without visiting at least some of its many family-run wineries and wine cellars. Practically all of them serve Dingač and Postup along with simple traditional dishes prepared with great local ingredients.
