Four Classic SloCro Holiday Pairings
Written by Daniel Lukin-Beck // December 24, 2020
The holiday season this year is unlike any other, but one thing 2020 has not and cannot take away from us – is our kitchen! While perhaps, we’ll be eating in a smaller company and smaller crowds this year, the holiday and Christmas season is about being festive and indulging in special and sometimes extravagant dishes. Given the holidays – no matter where you celebrate them – are synonymous with the wintertime, holiday dishes tend to be quite hearty: rich and indulgent full of warming flavors. And when considering the wines of Slovenia and Croatia (particularly the Dalmatian Coast of Dalmatia), those flavors are right on par for the epic dishes we roll out for the holidays. For the sake of vicariously sharing in your holiday meals, we will highlight some of our favorite classic holiday dishes and the perfect wines to go with them.
1. Prime Rib with Creamy Horseradish Sauce & Rodica Refosk
There are few things better than a perfectly cooked prime rib, slathered with creamy, cool, and slightly spicy horseradish sauce. Prime Rib is perfect for the holiday, packed with indulgent flavors.
While there are plenty of equally indulgent reds from Slovenia and Croatia, the wines that would work best are the often-under-sung Refoŝk from Istria. Packed with red and black fruit, underlying spice, and a nervy acidity, Refosks (and Teran’s) are “food wine” in its truest form. Given its superb structure and acidity, Rodica Refosk perfectly complements bold flavors, especially a prime rib prepared rare and the spice of horseradish sauce, making both the prime rib and Refosk sing harmoniously.
2. Baked Ham & Piizota Babic
The next classic is a traditional baked ham, which is always a crowd-pleaser around the holidays, but best of all – it’s easy! When buying a ham, most of the work is already done for you – it comes pre-smoked, fully-cooked, and spiral cut; all you have to do is slab it with some flavors, and it's good to go! Typically it is glazed with some combination of honey, butter, and sugar which is a perfect complement to the saltiness of ham, and lo-and-behold, the next complement to the holy trinity of Baked Ham: Babic. The ripe dark fruits, gentle tannin structure and high level of drinkability make Babic the perfect pairing of easy drinking with easy cooking. Salty ham + sweet glaze + juicy Babic = holiday happiness.
3. Fried Smelts & Skaramuca Posip
While smelts are an American tradition, it is hard to say that anyone knows eating whole small fish better than those of the Croatian coast. Finding delicate white fish of your regional specialty and frying them whole makes these a perfect fishy appetizer. It’s like a grown-up, super sophisticated version of fish sticks! For an indulgent fishy snack, you need a rich but mineral-driven wine from the Adriatic coast. Packed with melon, herbs, and a salty minerality, both the fried smelts and the Posip would go down dangerously easily even before the main course is served.
4. Roast Lamb & Zlatan Crljenak
Pulling out the big guns here, with the roast of roasts and the reds of reds. Of all the roasts, lamb roast is some of the richest and most delicious meats to roast, given its natural fattiness and gaminess. To hold up to a dish with these intense flavors, you need a wine that can rival that same intensity and power, and Zlatan’s Crljenak (Tserl-yeh-Nak) does just that. Crljenak is genetically traced back to the grape's original parent, Zinfandel, and you find vastly similar characteristics of bright, fresh red berries and plums with a full and robust body. The bold and popping fruits of the Crljenak runneth cut right through the richness of the roast lamb, making for a wonderful indulgent holiday meal to celebrate such a wonderful time of year.
We hope you are able to enjoy any of these or any of your own SloCro pairings in your own way this holiday season. Nazdravaje!
