Buhač Rosé brought thousands of couples together, and now it’s time for the owner to finally settle down too
I visited Domagoj at his vinery in Ilok countless times, but I’m sure I never found him relaxing. For example, watering the flowers in his picture-perfect front yard, or playing cards with his friends in the air-conditioned cellar.
A couple of days ago, I witnessed a young man’s disappointment at the Interspar supermarket in Osijek, when the shop assistant informed him that they were momentarily out of the wine he wanted. The young man had asked for Domagoj Buhač’s Rosé, confident that it would make a perfect Valentine’s Day gift for his girlfriend, together with the rose he was holding in his left hand. Sensing the young man’s disappointment, the shop assistant did his best to offer him an alternative:
I don’t know what the deal is with this Buhač, but you’re the fourth person who asked for his Rosé in the past hour! As far as I know, it should be available at the Vinita wine shop over on Strossmayer street.
I saw Vinita’s owner, Vinko Ručević, the next day and told him the story, making a point of how nice it was of the shop assistant in Interspar to generously direct the young man to another shop where he might find what he was looking for.
To be honest, the wine in question is something of a phenomenon. As much as I order of this Rosé, it always sells out in record time. And believe me, I’m not talking about small volumes, Vinko told me.
I wanted to know if the young man from Interspar had come to get the Rosé.
We had several buyers who were referred to us by Interspar, and we can only hope that the disappointed young man ended up finding his intended Valentine’s Day for his girlfriend after all.
Some days later, I was at Domagoj Buhač’s. Like the previous hundred times I had come to see him, I found him at his cellar. That’s because he never leaves it. In his own admission, he has no idea what “social life” means, and he considers a trip to a café or restaurant a colossal waste of time.
Last year, I had a friend from Zagreb come to visit with his wife. Both are fans of active lifestyle. Right up my alley! So we ran a stretch of 14 kilometres in the vineyards in the morning, and then drove to Vukovar and spent the next three and a half hours kayaking down the Danube, rowing 34 kilometres to Ilok. When we got there, they invited me to have “fiš” (fish stew) with them. Having to sit down at the restaurant for half an hour after a whole day of outdoor sports was a sore trial!
You see, after I ran for 14 kilometres and rowed for three and a half hours that day, I was exhausted by the thirty minutes I spent at the restaurant. I have no social life, and such activities, which I truly see as a waste of time, drive me crazy.
Is that why you sleep at your booth almost every time at wine festivals?
Festivals bore me. I must have been told to smile 40,000 times. Had I listened, someone might have stopped at my booth. My brother-in-law tells me it’s a wonder I ever sell any wine, given my presentation skills!!!
Truthfully, Domagoj has no problem selling his wines. On the contrary, he sells 10,000 bottles of his famous Rosé alone every year. Only a few short years ago, he almost shyly put the first 600 bottles on the market. They sold out within days without ever having left the cellar.
We were sitting at the heated tasting room, sampling wines. When it was the Rosé’s turn, Domagoj kept smelling it, a tender look on his face.
Well, it’s nice. Such a lovely smell. Don’t you think so, he asked me.
Yes, but I find your Rosé too sweet.
Domagoj took a sip and frowned:
Ugh, it’s sweet all right! You know who likes such Rosé? People who don’t like wine! Now, try this Vulgata.
What’s that?
That’s the name of the Graševina I make my money on. I sell about 100,000 litres a year. That’s what I call business!
The “Liska” Graševina was named after the area along the Serbian border. The road linking the Ljuba Border Crossing with nearby Erdevik runs parallel to the last row in the vineyard. If you take just one step, you’ll be in Serbia! Just as everything else about Domagoj tends to be illogical, it often happens that you have no Croatian teleoperators’ service in Liska, and end up in roaming...
Everyone always assumes that Serbian teleoperators’ service is available there, but they’re wrong. You get the strongest service in Liska from a base station on Mt. Majevica in Bosnia and Herzegovina!!!
According to Domagoj, the vineyards in Liska and neighbouring Široka šuma are positioned at an altitude of 276 metres, the highest in the Ilok vineyard region.
By comparison, the vineyards in Principovac are located at an altitude of 209 metres, says Domagoj in an attempt to put things into perspective for me, knowing that I put a huge number of hours into the organisation of the Traminac Festival at the said country estate every year.
Speaking of Domagoj’s vineyards, I usually visited him at his holiday home in Božino brdo on St. Vincent’s Day (locally known as “Vinkovo”). The vineyard, bought a long time ago by his father Ivan, was the starting point of the Buhač family’s sensational wine success story. Before the war, they owned a vineyard in Radoš, and then they deliberately started buying land at higher altitudes, not wanting to have vineyards in hollows, which are susceptible to frost.
In any case, higher altitudes, which get more air circulation, are a safer location for vineyards in Liska or Široka šuma!
To reach them, you need an all-terrain vehicle. Or, in Domagoj’s case, a 1998 Mazda 323 on which he had a suspension lift done, giving its wheels the ability to traverse even the worst potholes without fear of damaging the sump.
When we arrived in Liska in his “offroad” Mazda, in spite of slow driving, the car was covered in dust. I swear, the dust was a centimetre thick on the rear windshield!
I’ll write “I don’t have a girlfriend” in the dust!
I beat him to it. But he changed his mind, quickly wiping the words off with his hand.
People won’t get the joke! Come to think of it, seeing as how many couples were brought together by my Rosé, maybe it’s time for me to finally settle down too. How old were you when you got married?
39!
So there’s still hope for me then.
In truth, Domagoj is an incredible workaholic. He works so hard that he recently decided to shorten his own working hours and now works from 7:00 am to 5:00 pm rather than to 7:00 pm.
I decided to cut two hours off every day to save something to do for the next day. I get so many things done in 12 hours that I often have nothing to do the next day!
When he took a liking to scuba diving, he found a pond in a vineyard – where else! – that was four metres deep, and practiced diving in full gear.
It was a bit scary. You could hardly see a thing.
When he took a liking to rowing, he joined a group of friends from Ilok who were preparing for the Neretva Boat Marathon between Metković and Ploče. He spent an entire summer training with them, and ended up rowing a hellish 23 kilometres down the Neretva.
I visited Domagoj at his vinery in Ilok countless times, but I’m sure I never found him relaxing. For example, watering the flowers in his picture-perfect front yard, or playing cards with his friends in the air-conditioned cellar. I made a point of feigning surprise at finding him in the cellar every time, and Domagoj responded with his typical dark humour. One time, knowing that I would make some kind of comment when I found him cleaning his cellar again, he told me that he was “six feet under”! A couple of days later, making another joke at his own expense, he sent me a photo I had a hard time deciphering. When I texted him back, telling him I don’t understand what’s in the photo, he replied:
You’ve accused me of spending all my time in the cellar, so I sent you this photo as proof that it’s not true: sometimes I’m under the tractor too!
Domagoj’s father was one of the first winemakers in Ilok who opened privately held wineries after the war. Having started out with two hectares, now they have twenty. Initially, they only produced Traminac (Traminer) and Graševina. Now Ilok is known for a fine Merlot as well, thanks to them. And they have no problems selling everything their make.
Their wines sell so well that they have never given serious thought to archiving some of their older wines. Or, as Domagoj would put it, “I believe I know how to make a good wine, but I know for a fact that I have no idea how to keep it!”
I’d like to leave the Merlot and the Cabernet Sauvignon to age in their bottles for a little while longer, but I sell them all in a year. People want wine, and I deliver!
Domagoj has earned his degree from the Faculty of Economics. When I asked him to explain how his degree helps him run his wine business, Domagoj told me that the master’s degree in economics helped him understand “you can sell a bottle of Graševina for 25 kuna and still make a decent living on it.”
He takes particular pride in being probably the only winemaker who “asked for no COVID-19 relief from the Government. Not one kuna!”
