The story of this wine has crucial importance for Croatian winemakers. Crljenak or Tribidrag is a variety of black-skinned wine grape that is actually genetically equivalent to the Zinfandel and Primitivo. Local winemakers take a big pride into Crljenak - one of the most famous indigenous grapes of Croatia and Zinfandel’s ancestor. In this video we are bringing you to a place where the whole story started. Ivica Radunic is speaking about this important discovery and how the University of Davis confirmed a 100% DNA match with the famous American Zinfandel back in 2001.

Back in the period after the WW2, winemakers and other farmers from Kastela brought their surpluses of Crljenak and other agricultural goods to Agricultural COOP Kaštela in order to exchange it. Agricultural COOP Kaštela had a huge significance to local farmers who are often nostalgic about it. As Crljenak is coming back to its origins, maybe it’s time for Agricultural COOP Kaštela to shine again with its old glow.

•    We are standing in the vineyard where the story about Crljenak Kaštelanski started. 
•    Luckily, search for the origin of American Zinfandel, one of the most famous black wine sorts, have brought experts from the Agricultural University to Kaštela and other localities on mainland and islands. They came here 20 years ago searching for Zinfandel in order to prove that it originated here in this area. 
•    As this discovery was made, it was proved that this sort is not their authentic sort. It turned out that the sort came from our area.
•    A long time ago, in middle ages, 500-600 years ago Crljenak existed and that same sort was called Tribidrag . Experts sticked to that name. It is identical to Crljenak Kaštelanski and Zinfandel or Primitivo from Italy. We are still using names Zinfandel, Pribidrag, Tribidrag as those are all synonyms and each name is correct. But it was discovered as Crljenak Kaštelanski and with that name it entered in all encyclopedias.