I walked into Augusta Food and Wine with the intention of buying a bottle of wine, instead I walked out with two. It seems like that’s what always happens to me when I shop there, not that I’m complaining. In this case I couldn’t pass on this bottle of Graševina from Croatia.
What do I know about Graševina? Nothing, I’d never even heard of it, but I’ve had some solid success with Croatian wines, mostly from the Dalmatian Coast. This bottles comes to us from Podunavlje, a river basin of the Danube on the border of Serbia and Croatia. It’s as far from the Dalmatian Coast as you can be in Croatia.
The producer, Vina Belje, trace their history back to 1697, when Prince Eugene of Savoy was awarded the land and developed it into an agricultural estate, though records indicate wine has been produced here since the 3rd century CE.
In Jancis Robinson’s book on grapes, a significant portion of the entry on Graševina deals with how it is frequently confused with Riesling. Although DNA testing reveals there is no relationship between the two grapes, Graševina is frequently named as some variation of Riesling in wine producing regions throughout Europe. Having tried it, I can kind of understand why.
Straw-green in color, with a cantaloupe rind nose, the wine was light-bodied, with high acid, flavors of green bell pepper, melon, cantaloupe, and dill. To me, it seemed an exceptionally food friendly wine that is unfairly overlooked and underappreciated, just like Riesling.
In the future I’ll have to pay more attention when I’m shopping white wines from Eastern Europe, that bottle of “Rizling” I’m passing by may in fact be Graševina, not that I’d mind in either case, but while I’ve had Riesling from Transylvania, I didn’t even know what Graševina was.