Havr grapevine is at the origin of Bottle Shock. The wine world was shaken in 2003 when a Californian Chardonnay defeated the best of French wines in a blind tasting competition but the grapes originally came from Croatia.
Bottle Shock is the name of the movie made about the momentous event which showed for the first time that French wines could be beaten in a competition which had been running for thirty years during which France reigned supreme.
The man behind it all it was Mike Grgich from Croatia who left his native land to seek his fortune in the USA and founded Grgich Hills Winery in sunny California. In partnership with the Mondavi family they mada Napa Valley wine famous throughout the world when their wine won the blind tasting in Paris.
It took some time before it was established that the zinfandel grape variety was finally traced back to Dalmatia in Croatia and ultimately to the Plavic Mali grape which still grows today on the island of Hvar.
Wine production on Hvar goes back a long time, so far back that the vineyards of Hvar are under the protection of World Heritage Sites and UNESCO as they are the world's oldest agricultural plain where cultivation has been shown to be continuous. The first vines were planted on Hvar by the Greeks over 2000 years ago.
You can enjoy wine tours and tasting at the Bastijani vineyards and why not stock up the fridge of your villa with a few bottles of Mali Plavac?
We have a some lovely holiday villas in Hvar which are reliable, well located and at a good price, let us help you choose one so you can enjoy a bottle of the local wine on the terrace by the pool.