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.