Red wine

Dingač

Robe — Near-black garnet, dense as the stone it grows from

  • fig
  • carob
  • black cherry
  • sea salt
  • sun-dried herbs
Palate
Broad, warm and powerful, ripe tannin carrying the heat of its slope
Ageing
5–15 years
Serving
16–18 °C

Dingač is a single slope: a 45-degree pitch of stone on the seaward side of the Pelješac peninsula, falling straight into the Adriatic. In 1961 it became Croatia's first legally protected wine site, and in 1973 the growers dug a tunnel through the ridge so tractors could finally reach vineyards that had only ever been worked by hand and donkey.

The grape is Plavac mali, and the local saying explains the wine: the vines are roasted by three suns — the sky's, the sea-mirror's, and the heat thrown back by the white stone. The result is the Adriatic's biggest red: figs, carob, salt and heat, a wine that tastes of a slope too steep for anything but conviction.

The blend

A typical modern composition

Where it is made

Producers

A few estates working in this style today — a sample, not a ranking

Through time

Indicative presence index, 0–100Origins & Antiquity — 10The Monastic Middle Ages — 15Exploration & the Fortified Age — 15Classifications & the Golden Age — 20Phylloxera & the World Crises — 20The Modern & New World Era — 45Antiquity10500150017001875195045