Pošip: Dalmatia's Best Kept Secret

I came to Pošip the way I come to most good things: through my father. He grew up in Croatia, and when I was old enough to drink wine at the table, there was always a bottle of something local — usually white, usually from a small producer whose name I didn’t recognize, often from Korčula or Hvar or one of the other Dalmatian islands.

Pošip was among them. It took me years to understand that what we were drinking was special.

What Is Pošip?

Pošip (POH-sheep) is a white wine grape indigenous to the Dalmatian islands — thought to have originated on Korčula, a long, forested island off the southern Croatian coast. It’s been grown there for centuries, long before the wine world started paying attention to Croatian varieties.

The wines it produces are distinctive. At their best, they are dry and full-bodied without being heavy, with a mineral backbone that reminds you of the limestone soil the vines grow in. The aroma is herbal — dried herbs, stone fruit, sometimes a breath of almond. On the palate there’s brightness, a pleasant bitter finish, and underneath it all that particular quality I can only describe as salinity: a suggestion of the sea, of the salt air, of the specific geography of the Dalmatian islands.

A well-made Pošip is one of the most distinctive white wines in Europe. It tastes like nowhere else.

Why It Isn’t More Famous

Croatian wines, for complicated historical reasons, spent much of the twentieth century poorly positioned for export. The vineyards were nationalized during the Yugoslav era; quality suffered; the reputation of the region’s wines didn’t recover quickly even after independence.

In the last decade or so, a new generation of small Croatian producers has been changing this. The international wine press has started to notice. But Pošip is still largely unknown outside of people who’ve traveled to Croatia, or who have Croatian heritage, or who are unusually curious about European wine.

This is, I think, a situation that will not last. The world is running out of interesting unknown wine regions. Dalmatia is too good to stay secret.

How to Drink It

Cold but not ice-cold. A proper wine temperature — around 10 to 12 degrees Celsius — allows the aromatics to open up without the wine feeling flat. Serve it in a proper white wine glass.

What to eat with it: grilled fish, obviously, since that’s the context in which it evolved. But also: mild cheeses, seafood pasta, lightly dressed salads, prosciutto, anything with herbs. It’s a wine that complements rather than competes.

My favorite way to drink it: on a stone terrace in Dalmatia, late afternoon, the sun beginning to lower toward the sea, dinner still an hour away. The light at that hour turns everything amber. The wine in the glass picks up the color.

You don’t need to be in Dalmatia to appreciate it — good Pošip travels well. But if you ever find yourself on those islands in summer, I would encourage you to order local and drink slowly. Some things are best understood in place.

Where to Start

If you want to explore Pošip without traveling to Croatia, look for these producers: Bire, Saints Hills, Toreta, Korta Katarina. They export to a number of markets and represent some of the best examples of what the grape can do.

Buy a bottle. Chill it. Pour it into a good glass. Close your eyes and imagine limestone, pine, and the Adriatic in the distance.

Welcome to Dalmatia.