Winery Vukas
If you go through the old "Napoleon way" (it was really built by Napoleon) from Ston to Ponikve, climbing up to the top of the hill, we will be mesmerized by the way the road was built as well as the beautiful view of the walls.
Arriving on the top of the hill you can experience a whole other picture that simply makes you take a deep breath and enjoy the beauty of the blue sea spreading all the way to and beyond the island of Mljet.
Just a little bit further, the view of many pieces of rocks stacked in dry stone walls makes you feel all the sweat and hard work that was needed to prepare these demanding terrains for the planting of his Royal Highness Plavac Mali.
Most of the vineyards in our property were planted between 1950 and 1980 and is 100% Plavac Mali. My brother and I have taken over the business of taking care of the vineyards and winemaking in 2002, and after the harvest in 2003 we have hired professional help so we could approach the work in the vineyard and winemaking in the right way.
Since then, all our attention is dedicated to building the vinery and making different approaches to viniculture and winemaking. The result is evident in year 2006 when our first premium vine "Plerej" was produced. In the next harvests we achieved exquisite quality grape yield of as small as 0.5 - 0.7 kg per grape vine. Extremely favorable weather in 2009 and grapevines in very good condition provided us the opportunity to make the late harvest (along with the regular one) and create "Plerej grand cru". "Plerej grand cru" is a medium dry wine (10 g of unfermented sugar per liter) and 16.2% of alcohol.
Our policy of producing wine is to have a low yield in as late harvest as possible, so we could obtain as many dry grapes as possible which is the best material for top and premium quality wines. We are not trying to produce wines that are particularly harmonic, light and more acceptable to the market but to produce a wine that has its own identity and autochthonism, a fruit flavored wine, robust with aromas typical to the wine variety and land it grows on. This does not mean that we avoid implementing modern technologies. On the contrary we use all the modern equipment there is. During regular harvests we monitor a full fenol ripeness so we can obtain better colour, maceration is short lasting (5/7 days) on a temperature of 19/21 C, fermentation occurs in inox tanks during 1/2 months at the same temperature, and after that the wine is aged in wooden barrels of 225 l for at least 2 years.
We are lucky enough to own vineyards on the best geographical loction with the best grape variety for the given land, vinery that we decorated according to our own wishes, top enologists that have taught us many things we now know about wines and are grateful to more and more satisfied consumers of our wines.
Love for the vinemaking grows as one realizes wath a complex product wine is and how many new challenges every harvest brings and each satisfied consumer brings us and hope that all the hard work and effort we invest in our wines is not in vain.
In our vinery, besides the wine we invite you to taste all kinds of liquers as well as ecological olive oil we produce from the autochthonous variety Oblica.
