Istria
Wine, oil and stone houses between two seas.
Istria is the peninsula three countries wanted and Croatia got. You can tell: the villages inland have Italian and Croatian names, the konobas serve pasta with truffles, and the wine — Malvazija, Teran — tastes of both.
The coast is Venetian: Rovinj, jutting into the sea on a hill like a Canaletto; Poreč with its Byzantine basilica. The interior is Tuscan without copying Tuscany: hill villages like Motovun and Grožnjan, oak forests with white truffles, olive groves whose oil ranks among the world's best.
Near Bale, in the south, the Meneghetti estate grew out of stone and time: first the wine, then the house. It's where you understand Istria.
Istria is Italy at Croatian prices — with a character of its own.
We send people to Istria who take wine and oil seriously and don't need a big city for it. Meneghetti near Bale is the house: stone buildings around a courtyard, twelve hectares of vines, its own oil, a kitchen that cooks what grows two hundred metres away. Nothing bought in for the cellar. That's the decision that explains everything else. Come in October for truffle season. Go to Motovun in the morning, Rovinj in the evening, and skip Pula.
