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 Located in Drače on the Pelješac Peninsula in Croatia (about 80 kms due North along the coast on the Adriatic Sea from Dubrovnik, the current hot favourite tourist resort town for many Indian travellers), Edivo Vina is the first Croatian winery successfully exploiting underwater ageing of wines commercially.
The winery aims to attract tourists and offers visitors to join professional divers to visit and watch the submerged amphoras, each containing a bottle of red wine. To add to the excitement, there is a sunken ship close-by to make it an exciting underwater adventure for wine lovers. Of course, non swimmers are also welcome to visit the winery above ground and taste the wine that has been aged for 3 months in the winery then immersed under water around 18-25 m deep where it is stored from 1-2 years.
The winery is named Edivo Vina (Wines) after the owners Ivo and Anto Šegović and Edi Bajurin who got the idea of underwater cellaring in 2011, most likely encouraged by the famous find in 2010 of the ship wreck of 170 years ago. Several bottles of VCP champagne were found intact and were found to be still drinkable, fetching astronomical prices in auctions. One of these bottles was even bought by the Indian expat Ravi Viswanathan, an investor from Singapore in both Sula and Grover Zampa Vineyards.
 Edivo took a slightly different approach than other researchers before them already experimenting for around 2 decades in different countries including France, Spain, Italy, Greece and the US. Fearing that direct bottles coming in contact with sea water might spoil the wine, they decided to put each bottle in small amphoras of the kind that were used earlier by Greeks- made with terracotta and having two jug-like handles within which the bottles were fitted. First such amphorae were dropped in the sea in 2013- 2014, properly caged and protected against sea water seeping in the bottle when staying under water for 1-2 years.
The red wine is being made from the local Plavac Mali grapes from the nearby vineyards in Janjina.
Keeping in tune with most other undersea wines, the price is not exactly cheap as it is listed at around €90 and still not easily available except at the winery and in Croatia. Reportedly, the company focuses only on this grape and the under-sea wines though the standard version is also available. It offers a great opportunity to the tourists who are underwater sea explorers and wine lovers to watch the wine maturing under sea and taste it in the winery above ground. The wine is appropriately labelled as Navis Mysterium - The Sea Mystery.
Wine bottles are placed in terracotta amphorae and dropped under the sea water at the depth of 18–25 meters. All of them are laid on the cork and scattered at different locations. The sea water creates beautiful layer of shells, corrals and algae as you can see in the photographs alongside. The owners claim that the wine does not lose any of the aromas, quality or colour; instead cooling in ideal conditions in perfect silence and no disturbance improves the quality.
 Interestingly, it is the contact with these various elements of sea that has made TTB (FSSAI of the US alcoholic beverage industry) giving a ‘Yellow Tag’ to the Napa Valley-based Meera Winery, pioneers in the underwater ageing in the USA. Warning has been issued to the winery: ‘ The FDA has advised us that aging wine in a way that bottle seals have contact with sea or ocean waters may render these wines adulterated and contaminated with filth or may render injurious to health. We understand that every ten meters of depth at which a wine is aged subjects wine bottle seals to one atmosphere of pressure; this pressure may periodically increase or decrease due to tidal flow and storm surges. Overpressure on bottle seals increases the likelihood of seepage of sea or ocean water into the product. As a result, variation in overpressure during tidal flows and storms would allow the bottles to “breathe,” or exchange contents of the bottle with the sea or ocean, as the bottle tries to equilibrate its internal pressure to the external sea pressure, and chemical and biological contaminants in ocean water may contaminate the wine.’
The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) does not seem to give cognisance to the fact that wines discovered in the ship- wreck around 200 years ago have not caused any such harm to the wine. In any case, the position by TTB may not have any negative impact on the underwater wines in Croatia and visitors may like to visit the winery and buy these wines.
According to the winery ‘Sea mysteries are always related with nautical maps, captain’s logs or passionate romances with tragic end.’ We are optimistic enough to say that this winery has only exciting and romantic days ahead . For details, visit http://www.edivovina.hr/
For an earlier related Article, visit
Ervideira: Ageing Wine underwater in Alentejo in Portugal
Subhash Arora |