At one point in the beginning of the 90s, a few Croatians came together and figured: let’s plant some Malvazia grapes, revive our winemaking industry, make some olive oil too while we’re at it, put a strong marketing campaign behind the whole thing and tie all this together with tourism and great programs. Their plan seems to be working. Today, the Malvazia grape is as much a part of Istria as its beautiful beaches. It is a white grape variety originally from Cyprus or Crete. Before the philoxera crisis, supposedly 30,000 hectares of this grape were planted here. Over the past ten years, more and more of this grape has been planted, encouraged by grants and other forms of support. Apart from this, olive production has also received momentum and the glistening leaves of the olive trees can be seen throughout Istria. It’s obvious Croatians are on the right track and I give it only a few years, maybe a decade, before Istria will become synonymous with this wonderful grape variety. ...
In Pécs, everyone knows, if you want a good fish soup, go across the border to Csúza, Croatia. There at Kovács Csárda, they make the best fish soup anywhere. It is approximately fifty kilometers from Pécs, south of Mohács, not far from the banks of the river Danube. You can tell from its name that Csúza was once a part of Hungary. Their frish soup is always made to order
—you say for how many and you pick the type of fish. They also make their noodels fresh; their recipe starts like this: 4 kilograms of flour, 50 eggs, salt. In these parts, they serve noddles with the fish soup, not just with bread like elsewhere. So we had mildly hot fish soup with homemade noodles and a good Olaszrizling (Welschriesling) spritzer to go with it. It was on one of the these gastro tours that we discovered they make pretty good wine here in Croatia too! ...
Wine Tours 
