Written by Tony Aspler | 02 February 2010

Wine is a difficult and finicky houseguest. We’re lucky that it doesn’t have its own voice, or the bottle would spend most of the time complaining and we would have to send it for professional counselling. It would always be going on about something or other. Wine gets “bottle shock” when first introduced to the container in which it will spend its life, rather like an unsuccessful first date that turns into a lock-down arranged marriage. Wine doesn’t like to travel and has to rest several weeks on arrival at its destination before it gets back its mojo (balance). It has no desire to go to Florida for the winter; it doesn’t like fluctuations of temperature or being jostled by vibrations from machines (clothes dryers, compressors, dishwashers, elevators, trains, subways or passing traffic, etc.). It abhors bright light and heat and does not like the smell of paint, solvents, detergents or household refuse (strong odours can, over time, seep through the cork and affect the flavour of the wine). Given its finicky disposition, wine, if truth be told, probably suffers from agoraphobia: if those bottles in your basement had their way they would rather be slumbering in the dark, damp cellar where they were born and not have to travel at all. But life is hard, and wines, like pets, are there for our enjoyment. And, like pets, wine responds best to kindly treatment rather than benign neglect or abuse.

My heart bleeds when I see where some people store their wines. I have been in kitchens that have wine racks installed over refrigerators, with bottles slowly cooking from the rising heat and being massaged into old age by the vibrations of the compressor. I have seen wines stored in terra cotta tubular tiles set into stone walls beside a fireplace in the den. I have seen wines stored in unheated attics that bake in summer and freeze in winter — rather like Madeira lodges, which encourage the oxidization of their wines this way. And I have to confess that my own parents used to keep the single ceremonial bottle of Manischewitz in the linen closet, at a temperature above the thermostat setting in the living room. So be kind to your wine. It will reward you for your concern.

Written by Tony Aspler | 19 January 2010

When was the last time that you opened a bottle of Plavac Mali, Grasevina, Malvazija or that splendid vowel-deprived white varietal called Grk from the island of the same name? If you can put your hand on your heart and say, “Not since lunch,” I’ll believe you; otherwise, you’re missing out on the Next Big Thing.

These are all wines from Croatia whose appearance in our market is all too rare. The Serbo-Croatian war of 1991 to 1995 set back the wine industry in both countries and only now are they making efforts to export them — a mere 15 per cent of Croatia’s wine currently leaves the country. Like the better-known European regions to the west, Croatia’s vineyards were decimated by the phylloxera scourge in the 1860s. An equally disastrous blight occurred after World War II when the Soviets took over and nationalized wine estates, turning them into collective farms. Then, one year after the fall of Communism in Croatia, the country was plunged into a five-year sectarian war. The result is that today there is less vineyard surface than before World War II, currently measured at 32,500 hectares.

The major hurdle for Croatian producers placing their wines in North American markets is the difficulty we have with the names of grapes, the producers and the regions. Who but the most adventurous would pluck from the shelves a wine labelled Matošević Alba Malvazija Istarska or Daruvarska Izborna Berba Bobica Graševina? And if on a dare you ordered a bottle of Crljenak Kaštelanski from a restaurant wine list, did you know that you’d be getting Zinfandel?