Vinarija Barbazza · Smokvica
The family winery in the hills of Korčula which found Pošip and gave the cuttings away.
Article I — The Claims
01 · The Polje
The vines stand in the Smokvica polje and on the slopes above it — south-facing only, for the sun, and against the cold winters. We have mechanised exactly as little as we could get away with.
02 · The Terraces · dry-stone · south-facing slopes · vines 30–100 yrs
We still cultivate and renovate the old stone walls — for better wine, for the heritage they carry, and because they hold the soil against drought. Many growers now use the fields instead, to spare the effort. We still climb.
Those walls outlived every hand that laid them.
03 · The Harvest · hand-picked · 7–10 t a year
All of the work is manual — the tradition obliges us. Picked into open baskets to keep the quality high and spare the fruit, then checked and preselected once more at destemming; no machine ever enters the rows. Seven to ten tonnes a year become around seven thousand bottles in a good one.
Every grape, by hand. Machines are for those in a hurry to make ordinary wine.
04 · The Hill · limestone · phylloxera 1920s · 3 ha
Phylloxera emptied these hills in the 1920s and sent most of Korčula overseas. Three hectares of vines and olives stayed with us — along with the walls, the roads, and the upkeep. Keeping the tradition is the steepest slope we farm; we intend to keep farming it.
Three hectares. We kept them. You are welcome.
Article III · The Record
Our name, in its Venetian form, is Tomasich detto Barbazza. We write it the old way — Tomasich, not Tomašić — deliberately. The Founders Caslon typeface we set our headlines in is as old as our documents (1530–1759); the accent letters didn't exist in the original cut because they weren't used at the time. Wherever that old face appears in a headline, we use 1700s words and spelling; everywhere else we use a modern face with modern words.
No. 01 · The Name
The wordmark on every bottle is Tomaso Tomasich's own signature, taken from a document he signed in 1759. We didn't draw it. We found it.
Tomaso Tomasich · 1759 · our brand strategist
No. 02 · The Crest
A notary pressed it into a contract in 1753 to make it binding — a flower rising from a vessel. It was never drawn to sell wine. It was drawn to prove a fact. It does the same now, on every bottle, unchanged in three hundred years.
Antonio Bigliani · 1753 · our first graphic designer
No. 03 · The Discovery
Marin Tomašić — known as Caparin — was clearing trees in the Stiniva gorge above Smokvica when he found a white grape growing wild. He took cuttings, planted them, and over the years gave the vine to every grower in Smokvica and Čara. He never charged for it. That grape was Pošip — a natural cross of two old Korčula varieties, born on this island and nowhere else. It still grows here on its original, ungrafted roots. In the glass it's straw-gold and full-bodied: peach and apricot, citrus, almond, Mediterranean herbs and a note of sea salt, with bright acidity. Serve it cold, with whatever came out of the sea that morning.
Pošip grape · free cuttings · best business decision in family history
No. 04 · Today
In 1967 Pošip became the first Croatian white wine to win a protected designation of origin. Today it's the most-planted white grape on the Islands, grown from Pelješac to Hvar to the mainland. It all began with one wild vine above Smokvica. We make about seven thousand bottles a year, by hand, in the village where the grape was found. The whole region drinks Pošip because our family didn't keep it to themselves — and we'd make the same call again.
Every last vine of it traces back to a grape our family found wild in a forest and gave away. The white that remade the island is ours — and the wine is yours.
Živjeli!
The view from the terrace · come and join us for a glass of Pošip
The full record
The deeds, the seal, the register, the Venetian patent of nobility, the hand that became the wordmark — each photographed whole and transcribed. Open the full record →
One stone room beneath the terrace, fourteen degrees all year — the press, the oak, the iron key in the lock, five centuries of evidence on the walls. Come down →
Article IV — Our Wines
No. 01 · The White
Straw-flower, citrus, peach, apple — and a little salt.
The grape we found, grown where it was born — King of the white wines of Dalmatia, light-bodied at 12–13%. Serve it cool at 14 °C with whatever came out of the sea this morning: grilled fish, oysters, a plate of pršut and Paški sir — or just the afternoon. Our Pošip!!! — the exclamation marks are the family's, and we have left them.
No. 02 · The Red
Dark, autochthonous, entirely unbothered.
Our flagship red, and yes, that is its name. Plavac Mali is Dalmatian to the bone — the offspring of old Tribidrag, the very grape the world bottles as Zinfandel in California and Primitivo in Puglia, and a cousin of the great Dingač and Postup. Grown stubborn on dry-stone terraces, matured in old oak. Open it an hour ahead and pour at 16–18 °C with lamb off the fire, slow-cooked pašticada, or a board of aged cheese and pršut. Korčula is famous for its whites; we would like a word about the red.
No. 03 · The Rosé
The island light in a glass.
The red, caught early and lightly — dry, pale, faintly wild, the colour of a Smokvica evening about an hour before it is anyone's idea to open a second bottle. Serve it cold as the sun drops, with grilled vegetables, a summer salad, small fried fish — or nothing but the view of the bell-tower.
No. 04 · The Dessert Wine
Sun-concentrated. Slow. Unhurried.
The old Dalmatian sweet wine — not the fizzy northern stuff it rhymes with — made the way it has always been made: grapes dried in the sun, pressed slow, aged longer. Pour it small and lightly chilled after dinner, with dried figs and almonds, a wedge of hard cheese, or a rožata. For once the arguments have been settled and nobody wants to leave the terrace.
No. 05 · From the Grove
From the same hills, the same hands.
Extra-virgin olive oil from the groves above the vines — green, peppery, cold-pressed within hours of the harvest. Use it raw and without thrift: over grilled fish, warm bread, ripe tomatoes, a bowl of mussels. The oldest oil mill in Smokvica is older than three thousand years; we are merely the latest people to bother.
Article V — Personnel
A 500-year-old institution keeps a complete roster of its working members. So do we — including the one who cannot read this. Most of the family emigrated to Australia; keeping this list this long is the largest uphill battle we face.
The owner. The surname on the paper. The one keeping the 500-year line alive — and the reason there is still anything here to taste.
Environmental chemist, geologist, wine enthusiast, tourist guide — and the keeper of this website. Knows exactly which limestone you are standing on, and will tell you, at length, happily.
Dogtor of Philosophy. 4-Paw Bandit. Womanizer. Psychologist. Vagabond. Leisure-time Observer. Seven offices held. Has cleared his schedule for your tasting.
Article VI — Our Town
In the dead centre of Korčula, built up in the hills so the ancestors could hide from pirates. The fortified houses still stand; the sword-dance still remembers why.
The air carries lavender, rosemary and sage. Small chapels are scattered through the vineyards, each guarding a road or a spring. And though everyone assumes "Smokvica" means little fig, the parish chronicle argues it comes from water — the ponds that named the place in antiquity. From the tasting terrace you look straight at the five-hundred-year bell-tower, glass in hand.
Plate IV — Smokvica, in the heart of the island
Article VII — The Visit
Four steps. About two hours. Five hundred years. Tasting is on the covered stone terrace above the cellar — the documents on the wall behind you, the bell-tower in front, poured by the people whose name and hand are on the paper.
Meet at the Smokvica parish church, in the heart of the village — built inland so the ancestors could hide from pirates. Five centuries of Tomašićs are in its register: procurators, a priest sent to Rome, the cantor who kept the songs.
Up the outside stone stairs to the covered terrace above the cellar — honey stone, red doors, vines overhead. The 1530, 1618, 1723 and 1759 documents hang framed on the wall. Read them first.
The whole range is on the table: Pošip — the grape we found — the Debelo Čelo red, the Rosé, the Prošek, the olive oil. Take your time.
A glass of the red, a plate of pršut and Paški sir, and the bell-tower straight ahead. Wine, church, village and your own hand in one frame. This is the part nobody can sell you anywhere else.
Article VIII — Leave word
A question, a booking, a correction to five hundred years of paperwork — write it here. It reaches the family directly.
