The Hvar Winemakers Association

Written by Paul Bradbury on Thursday, 24 November 2011. Posted in Wine, Island News, Food and Drink

Hvar winemakers come together to promote its wines

On May 31, 2010, the winemakers of Hvar joined together to establish their own representative association (“udruga”). The Association includes thirteen wineries, from the smallest, local-business type up to big wineries, some of the internationally recognized. The President of the Association of Hvar Winemakers is Mr. Andro Tomic, famous winemaker and oenologist.

The association’s mission is to revitalise abandoned vineyards, protect and promote native grape varieties, and to promote the island of Hvar as a wine destination. Hvar's winemakers have organised wine tastings on the beautiful Dalmatian squares of Stari Grad and Jelsa this summer.

Hvar is a remarkable wine region and includes three grape varieties which are only gron here: Bogdanusa (white grape) , Prc and Drnekusa, known in Hvar dialect as Bogdanjusa, Parc and Darnekusa. Hvar is famous for its Plavac mali, grown on the south slopes of the island, but Plavac gives excellent results grown on the terrace vineyards around Svirce, and Vrisnik. The area was once famous for the wine Opolo, that could be described as the Dalmatian Rose.

The diversity of microclimate and soils on the Hvar gives winemakers the chance to produce large palette of wines. Bogdanusa and Prc are grown in the UNESCO-protected Stari Grad Plain, better known as Ager, and Drnekusa is grown on terrace vineyards around Svirce and on the area Vorh, a large plateau on Hvar's crest.

If you visit the Zagreb Wine Fair this weekend , you can easily recognise Hvar Winemakers by their logo, pictured here. The association's secretary is Ivana Krstulović Carić from Vina Caric in Svirce, and she can be contacted on for more information.

Members of Hvar Winemakers Association