Cuj

Danijel Kraljević

Danijel Kraljević, with a degree in winemaking, was born in 1973, and today recalls an incident from his early childhood, when his great grandfather August Zubin, ploughing the land in the vineyard, placed him on the wooden plough between himself and the draught oxen. Little Danijel was proud of carrying out important tasks in the vineyard with his maternal grandfather, and confided to his memory his grandfather’s usual catchphrase of Cuj, neka ti recen... (Listen, let me tell you...) which in the local dialect he addressed to his grandson, the local people and all with whom he talked. Many years later, now that he has continued on with the family viticultural and vinicultural and olive growing tradition with contemporary methods and a visionary project, Danijel has not named his modern winery and olive press after his own surname, rather after the quaint phrase of his grandfather, Cuj, doing honour to a man deeply rooted in the job in which the family farm of his grandson is engaged today.

Contemporary winery and olive mill

Danijel Kraljević did his secondary education in the agricultural school in Poreč, and then enrolled in economics. But just a few exams short of his degree, he decided to continue with his education in the Agriculture Faculty, where he took a BEng in winemaking. At that time he rapidly developed the family business in olive and wine production, fitting up the Cuj mill and winery with contemporary plant, and today in a technologically sophisticated and high capacity mill processes not only his own črna, buža and bjelica olives but also the fruit of the most distinguished Istrian olive producers, Duilio Belić, Klaudio Ipša...
Farnažine, not far from Umag, the birthplace of Danijel’s mother, Renata, in which the Cuj winery and olive mill is located, was once well known for its old lime kilns in which stone was burned to produce lime. The family of his father, Danilo, is originally from around Grožnjan, and on the old stone slab built in above the house door, the name Kraljević and the year 1783 are carved.

The family fields in that impoverished region were planted with grapes and olives, and just to a small extent with arable crops. Although while he was a teenager Danijel dreamed of getting as far away from the land as he could, in his riper years, on the verge of his thirties, Danijel was increasingly enthusiastic about grapes and olives, as if the seed that his grandfather August had planted in his childhood had suddenly sprouted. As the only son, he took on the responsibility for the continuation of the family agricultural tradition.

Three grape-growing sections

The family owns about six hectares of vineyard. This year they are planting vines on two more hectares, and plan for ten all told, thus reaching an area that will satisfying their viticultural ambitions without conflicting with the production capacities. Not far from the house is the Baština section; another is the section called Vela Boška on the way to Umag, while the third is Sveta Lucija, by Buje, white soil obtained from the father of Danijel’s wife Antonija, who is a bookkeeper and has put her own skills to work in the family business. All three sections are planted with Malvazia (about 65%), while at the Vela Boška section, in a part with deep red soil rich in minerals there is Teran (20%), Chardonnay, Muscat and Merlot. Current production runs to about 40.000 bottles, and the objective – after the planting of the new vineyards – is 50.000 bottles, the capacity of the cellar.

This is the golden number, the amount I think I can completely control, market properly and concentrate on incessant improvement of the quality of the wine. Every increase in production would need new investment in the cellar, and expansion of capacities. But I intend to concentrate on the quality of the products and on bringing the existing equipment up to date, which is an unceasing need in winemaking. I provide the market with what I like myself, young, fresh wines which are sometimes harder to produce than wine that has aged, which in the ageing process in the cellar can even get better. Twenty years ago we started to produce what is today a very popular rosé, which found particular favour among foreigners, after which our own wine bibbers accepted it both hands. People often think that only women like rosé, although I think that men prefer it. We make it out of Teran (about 70%), Merlot (25%) and the old variety Hrvatica, which a subcontractor grows for us (5%). Rosé is not just a summer wine, and our label with its identifiable and strong structure fits well into my vision of fresh wines with character, says Danijel Kraljević.

Three generations of winemakers

Danijel Kraljević belongs to a third generation of Istrian winemakers, who developed on the wine scene after the first – Matošević, Kozlović and Degrassi – and second generation – Coronica, Armano, Pilatto and others.
Part of the winery is dedicated to the tasting room, envisaged for visits by small groups of tourists in the summer, and for business discussions and arrangements organised in advance out of season. About 90% of the wines are sold on the domestic market, the rest going for export to Italy and the Benelux countries.
The cellar is part cut out of the solid rock, which is left on show in the cellar space. The rocks cut out have been used for making the dry stone walls that compose the house. The stone is ground down into sand and mixed with cement and used for concreting. The sieved red soil from the vineyard, mixed with lime, is brushed in the old manner onto the facade, creating the terracotta facing of the house, fitting gracefully into the landscape.

The Kraljevićes have about 1200 olive trees and plan to plant another 1500 to bring the total number up to about 3000. Depending on the year, they produce about 3000 litres of first-rate oil.

Danijel hopes that his son Evan is going to join him in the family business, after he has completed his agricultural secondary school in Poreč, and perhaps his younger daughter Lara will get involved as well.

Listen, let me tell you... let it just go on that way, grand-dad August might have said were he still alive.

Dobravac Wines

If you visit Rovinj, one of the finest cities on the Adriatic, getting into it along the oldest road that leads from Kanfanar towards the bay of Valdibora, you cannot help but pass by the estate of the Dobravac family. At the address Karmelo 1, alongside the little church of Our Lady of Carmel, you turn off to the Dobravac holding. From the yard there is a lovely view of the old core of Rovinj, and also in this handsome arrangement is the little family winery. As well as owning the winery, the family has a lovely vacation villa. They are all engaged in the business: Damir Dobravac, his wife Natalina and the children Carla and Matej.

The Dobravac winery produces six labels. They all have musical names and like music go from lighter to heavier. The names, Suite, Sonata, Symphony, Toccata, Fugue and Allegro were invented by Damir’s good friend, serious musician Massimo Brajković. Being into wines, and spurred by entirely non-commercial impulses, is a satisfaction on its own for Damir Dobravac, something that he was able to afford himself only after a successful career as one of the biggest producers of fruit and vegetables in Istria. From their own fields, in a circle of three kilometres from Rovinj, Dobrovac has supplied hotels and restaurants as well as shops with their first-class produce for a full two decades, their motto being the shortest route from field to table. Nevertheless, the long suppressed passion for winemaking is also rooted in the family tradition. In 2008, this passion took shape in the form of their own wine labels. Damir’s father Gašpar and his mother Foška moved in the 1950s to Rovinj, and quickly built up a house from which today’s impressive holding grew. Gašpar and Foška from the beginning were engaged in the trades they had learned in their native villages – olive growing, viticulture and winemaking. As well as this, they started letting out rooms to the first post-war tourists who began to visit Rovinj.

When young Damir took over the business, he improved it, having taken a course at Economics College, while his wife Natalina, of Rijeka-Istria descent, took a degree in Opatija’s Tourism Management Faculty. The young couple started in the crisis years of the war to get down to the business of building up the family holding. The discovery of a spring helped the rapid development of the production of fruit and vegetables.