Istria: The Land of Wine, Truffles, and Olive Oil
We eventually had to reluctantly leave our forest retreat in the Plitvice Selo. We packed up our trusty Duster SUV, which we’ve affectionately named Darcy, to continue our adventure to northern Croatia, an area known as Istria.
Istria is divided into two main areas: Green Istria, the forested, mountainous area located inland, and Blue Istria, which (you can probably guess this) is made up of the seaside towns located beside the Adriatic sea.
Green Istria
While driving through the region, Sean and I immediately noticed that it seemed as though every hilltop had a quaint settlement on top of it. I imagine that the purpose was for protection of the town during a seige — you would be able to see any invaders coming for miles! This thought has been reaffirmed by the fact that the majority of these towns are surrounded by a protective wall.
We started our journey in the hilltop town of Oprtalj, a town boasting a whopping population of 55 people! It appears as though at one point the town was possibly larger but the majority of the houses have been abandoned and are slowly being reclaimed by the earth. It was quite beautiful to see the crumbling stone frames of houses with forests growing inside of them!
We had the pleasure of staying in a renovated villa that was originally built in 1890. The villa was stunning — they kept a lot of the heritage charm with the renovation and I couldn’t help but feel like a bit of a princess while walking through the house. The vista from the pool deck was enough to make your jaw drop, too! The gentleman running the place, David, has to be one of the nicest human beings we have ever met and also happened to be an amazing chef. The breakfast he cooked for us every morning is by far the best breakfast we have eaten on this trip. He made sure we had a great time in Oprtalj by ensuring we knew where to eat and what to see in the area.
On our first day in Oprtalj we checked out both of the restaurants (yes, there are two, a surprising number for such a small town) and quickly realized that the food in Istria centers around one of my favourite delicacies — truffles! It’s interesting to note that the food in Croatia is somewhat dependent on where you are staying. In general, coastal towns serve a lot of seafood, a culinary area that they have mastered. Inland, the focus shifts to meat — lamb, pork, and beef. In the north, they stick to this same formula but just top everything in copious amounts of truffles and oh my, are they delicious!
This is probably a great time to talk about Croatian cats as most restaurants also have their local cat that frequents the joint. Let’s just say that I made friends with them all. There aren’t that many stray dogs in the country as there are programs and shelters that ensure that any strays are picked up and paired with their forever human but it doesn’t seem like the same courtesy exists for the felines of the country as there are a lot of strays everywhere. However, the cats are all very healthy and very friendly because each community takes care of their cats. They put out water and food for them on a daily basis. Our tour guide in Dubrovnik was telling us that there are old “cat ladies” in the city that go around feeding the cats. I thought he was pulling our leg until we saw an old lady going around with a bag of kibble leaving handfuls of foods for any cat she happened upon. Community cared for cats for the win (it sure beats the Italian break-your-heart starving kitties).
We made sure to take advantage of this truffle region by booking a truffle hunt with a local truffle hunter. We started out our tour by visiting the family’s storefront where we were treated to a breakfast of everything truffle — truffle sausage, truffle cheese, truffle honey, etc. etc. etc. We even experienced a cooking demo on how to make truffled eggs and were astonished by the sheer amount of truffle that went into that one dish. I think it’s safe to say that we ate more truffles in that one meal than we will ever eat in our lifetimes.
We learned that there are more dogs that live in the town of Vrh than there are people because every family owns around 5 truffle hunting dogs. This is a huge industry in the area! In France, truffle hunters usually use pigs for the hunt as they naturally love truffles. However, in Istria they use dogs because although their sense of smell isn’t as good as a pig’s, they are fast, and much easier to transport!
I found it interesting how they train the dogs to hunt the truffles. From an early age, usually around 3 months, they start feeding the puppies truffles. They usually start with truffle oil on bread and then progress to small pieces of truffle. Essentially, they just get the pups crazy addicted to truffles so that they search it out in the forest. You have to be quick on the hunt though, otherwise they will devour the truffle before you can stop them.
We did get the opportunity to go out into the forest with our truffle hunter and three of his truffle dogs, two seasoned veteran dogs and one training puppy. The dogs had such an acute sense of smell that they were able to find truffles growing that were about the size of a pea (not that these ones are worth anything). We fortunately did find a plum-sized white truffle which on the off-season would be worth about €200.
Overall, it was a super cool experience to see how truffle hunting is done. It’s also incredible the amount of work that goes into finding each truffle which made us appreciate why the cost of truffles is so high!
That evening, we decided that we did not have nearly enough truffles in our truffle breakfast 😜 so we went to the Michelin recommended truffle restaurant, Zigante. We treated ourselves to four wine-paired delicious courses of truffle inspired foods. This restaurant is a real treat for any foodie and we left with a belly full of the most delicious food.
David, our host, booked us a wine tour and tasting at a local winery, Kozlović. Although there are a few hundred wine-makers in Istria, he assured us that this was one of the best. The tour took us around their factory and they showed us how they go about making the wine. It was interesting that the EU gifted them a state-of-the-art bottling system which makes me think that they are trying to grow Croatian’s wine region.
After the tour, we did the tasting, the best part of any winery visit. Tastings are done very differently in Croatia as they tend to pour you full glasses of wine. You can really only visit about one winery per day otherwise you risk having to crawl home. It was a great introduction into Istrian wine and we got a taste for some of the more popular varietals of the region, Malvazija, the white wine, and Teran, the red.
We spent the rest of our time in Istria checking out some of the medieval towns neighbouring Oprtalj including Motovun and Grožnjan. We found that a lot of the towns are very artsy and the streets are lined with artisan shops selling everything from paintings to jewelry to hand-made leather goods. We also checked out an award winning olive oil producer, Ipša, and went to a honey shop where we did a honey tasting (and subsequently bought a lot of honey).
Green Istria was fantastic. It was the perfect mixture of quiet, relaxing, and gorgeous but also left us with no shortage of things to do. It’s a shame that the tourism to this area of the country isn’t as much as down south — people don’t know what they’re missing out on! Wine, olive oil, and TRUFFLES — three of my favourite things!
