Grk Bijeli

We drove across Italy late yesterday and then took a quaint boat ride across the Adriatic Sea disembarking on the tiny, yet quite scenic Croatian island of Korcula. We drive through the pine forests, although forest may be an overstatement and the olive groves to the little village of Lumbarda near the southern tip of the island. It's a small tourist mecca with pristine beaches and wonderful scuba diving, and it's the home of a curious white grape known as Grk Bijeli (it's not often that we English speakers run across a word with no vowels).

The weather here makes for a little island paradise, but it's also quite nice for grape growing. With overnight lows rarely below 5C/41F in the middle of winter and daytime highs usually peaking around 30C/86F in the summer, lots of sunshine, and relatively dry summers produce just the right amount of stress to grow Grk Bijeli.

It's a strange little grape. Grk Bijeli has only female flowers. It cannot reproduce on its own. So, it needs to be planted with grapes that have male flowers. Its husband of choice if often Plavac Mali.

The sandy soils of Lumbarda produces a dry wine with fairly high acidity and nice minerality. It's fairly aromatic, but unusual in a wine and not surprising considering the roads we drove on also has strong notes of both fresh spring pine and green olives.

We tend to drink Grk Bijeli young. Pair it with the likes of herb-seasoned clams, lightly fried sea bass, or for the classic pairing, brudet (brodetto di pesce on the other side of the Adriatic in Italy).

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