Meet the Winemakers: Dražan Krolo

Vinarija Krolo, Kaštela and Strmendolac, near Trilj in the Dalmatian hinterland, Croatia. Answered in writing, in Croatian, November 2026.

In the late 1990s a grape geneticist from UC Davis named Carole Meredith went to Dalmatia looking for the place California’s Zinfandel had come from, a question nobody had been able to answer in a century and a half of planting it. Working with Ivan Pejić and Edi Maletić of the University of Zagreb, she spent three years sampling old vineyards along the coast and out on the islands, sending anything that looked related back to Davis for testing, and none of it matched. The answer came in 2001 from Kaštela, the string of old stone villages along the bay between Split and Trogir, where, among the thousands of vines in Ivica Radunić’s mixed vineyard in Kaštel Novi, there were nine old ones the locals called Crljenak Kaštelanski. Their DNA was Zinfandel’s.

Dražan Krolo comes from Strmendolac, a small village about thirty kilometers inland, over the mountains behind Split and down into the Cetina valley near the town of Trilj. He moved to Kaštela as a young man, started his family and his company there, and has lived there ever since, but the family houses, the old one and the new one, are still in Strmendolac, and so are his vineyards and his winery. When he set out to make wine for a living, he took Kaštela’s grape home with him, away from the water. This is the Dalmatian Zagora, a country of karst and dry stone walls, where the winters run colder than they do on the coast and the bura comes down off the mountains hard enough to lean on. He describes it as the place where the continental climate and the Mediterranean one meet. His family kept vines there for generations, back through his father and grandfathers and great-grandfathers, but he was the first of them to make wine as a profession, and his first vintage was 2007.

The man he says taught him the most was the late Zlatan Plenković, who began planting the steep south face of Hvar in 1986 and made his name there on Plavac Mali, the great red grape of the Dalmatian coast, which the same Zagreb and Davis researchers later showed to be a child of Crljenak Kaštelanski. It was Plenković who talked him into planting Crljenak in Strmendolac in 2005, and the vines they planted had come all the way from Napa Valley. When I asked Krolo for his favorite wine that he doesn’t make himself, he named Plavac Mali and then explained, with what reads like real regret, that it won’t grow properly in Strmendolac, so what grows in his own rows is its parent instead.

He answered the twenty questions every winemaker in this series is asked, in writing and in Croatian, and then four more I sent him afterward. What follows is his account in English.

1. Who taught you?

I learned the most from my friend Zlatan Plenković, who was also a great role model for me. He taught me a lot about wine, and also about how to approach winemaking itself. His knowledge, his experience, and his dedication to the work left a deep mark on me.

2. Who have you taught, and where are they now?

I often have the chance to pass my knowledge on to young people who are just starting their careers in winemaking.

And it isn’t only beginners. Often they’re people who have been making wine for years, but have always done it the traditional way, without a professional, expert approach.

I try to pass on my knowledge and experience and help them improve how they make wine and reach the best quality they can. It makes me especially happy when I see that my advice and their hard work have brought real results.

3. Is there a vintage you date your life by?

Every vintage has something of its own, but some simply stay in your memory. It doesn’t have to be the vintage that made the best wine. Sometimes the one that matters more is the one that gave you the most trouble, or the one where you learned something special. When I remember a particular vintage, I remember everything else that was happening in our lives at the time.

4. What’s changed in the trade since you started that someone new would walk right past?

Over my many years of experience I’ve come to the conclusion that there are three equally important stages in making quality wine, and I give each of them 30 percent of the success. The remaining 10 percent I leave to luck.

The first 30 percent belongs to the vineyard. The agronomist’s role is key here, because without quality grapes there is no quality wine. Everything starts with the right approach to the vineyard and how it’s maintained.

The second 30 percent belongs to the work in the cellar. In this stage the enologist is decisive: his knowledge, his experience, and his ability to make quality wine from quality grapes.

The third 30 percent covers preparing the wine for bottling, the bottling itself, and everything that happens until the wine reaches the store shelf. The enologist matters a great deal here too, along with an expert technical approach and the use of modern technology. Even the best wine can lose quality if this final stage isn’t handled correctly.

And the remaining 10 percent? That’s luck. You can have top grapes, an excellent enologist, and the best technology, but there is always something that isn’t completely under your control. So in the end you need a little luck too, or rather, for dear God to be on our side so that everything goes the way it should.

5. Walk me through a typical harvest day at the peak.

During harvest there’s no such thing as normal working hours. The day starts early and often ends late at night. You have to organize people, keep an eye on what kind of grapes are coming in, control the processing, and keep making decisions. Something you didn’t plan for always comes up. It’s a physically and mentally demanding period, but at the same time it’s the most exciting part of the year, because that’s when you see the result of everything you did in the vineyard.

6. What decision do you make that you can’t fully explain to someone else?

Maybe the decision about the right moment to pick. Of course there are analyses and indicators we follow, but there is also something that comes with experience. You look at the grapes, taste a berry, see what the weather is doing, and you simply judge that the moment is right. It’s hard to explain that feeling to anyone, especially someone who has never been through a harvest.

7. Tell me about a harvest that went wrong.

There have been years when nature surprised us and the situation in the vineyard changed much faster than we expected.

A good example is this very year, when harvest on some of our sites came as much as fifteen days early. Because of the weather, the grapes ripened much faster, and changes like that can’t always be predicted.

In circumstances like these, despite all your experience and planning, it can happen that you haven’t got the cellar ready in time, organized the harvest, or secured everything you need. Every day brings changes in the grapes’ numbers, and you have to make decisions quickly because there’s no time to wait.

It’s hard to be completely ready for extreme conditions like that. This year was especially demanding and very instructive. Honestly, I wouldn’t want it to happen again, but it’s from experiences like this that a person learns the most.

In winemaking it’s important to have knowledge, experience, and good organization, but you have to be aware that nature can always change our plans.

8. Who’s the legend around the winery?

I don’t think there’s only one legend at our winery. Making wine is one long chain that involves many people, from those who look after the vineyard, through the agronomists and enologists, to everyone involved in processing, caring for the wine, and preparing it for market.

Every person in that chain has an important role, and each one contributes to the final result with their knowledge, their work, and their sense of responsibility.

I always say a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. If just one part of the process fails, everyone else’s effort can be put at risk.

That’s why, for me, all of those people are the legends of our winery. Without every one of them we couldn’t achieve what we’re aiming for, which is to make the best wine we can.

9. Is there something that happens at the end of crush every year?

Of course. It’s become a custom with us that at the end of every crush we all get together, treat ourselves, and celebrate the end of one of the most demanding periods of the year.

After all those days of hard work, early mornings, and long evenings, it’s good to sit down together, eat something good, have a glass of wine, raise a toast, and relax a little.

It isn’t any special ceremony, just a natural end to a big job done together. A chance to spend time with each other, thank one another for the effort, and toast another finished harvest.

10. What do people outside the trade always get wrong?

I think many people don’t understand how much time and work stands behind one bottle of wine. People see the finished product, a beautiful bottle and label, but they don’t see the whole year of work, uncertainty, and costs. And you can’t make wine overnight. You have to have patience and accept that nature often has the last word.

11. What’s the first thing you got wrong, and who caught it?

I think one of my first mistakes was exactly the one many people make at the start. I believed the most important thing was to make good wine, and that once you’d done that, most of the job was finished.

In the beginning I closed my bottles in a fairly primitive way, thinking it was good enough. Over time, though, I noticed that the wine didn’t always behave the way it should after bottling. It showed up especially in the white and rosé wines.

Once I had the chance to use a technology that checks what happens to wine after the bottle is filled and closed. The results showed me how wrong I had actually been, and how much that final step can affect the quality of the wine.

That’s when I started taking bottling and closure technology seriously. And that’s exactly when I realized how much I still didn’t know.

Today, after all these years, I think one of the greatest challenges in winemaking is moving wine from the barrel or tank into the bottle while keeping all of its quality.

It isn’t enough just to make top wine. It’s just as important to make sure it reaches the person who will drink it in that same condition.

That early mistake of mine was one of the most important lessons I’ve had in winemaking.

12. Is there something you still do the way you were taught, even though a faster way exists?

I believe there really are no shortcuts in making wine. Winemaking has its own rules, and every stage of production demands a certain amount of time, knowledge, and procedure that you simply have to respect.

What you know, you have to do as well as you can, and for what you don’t know, you should always seek advice, ask, and learn from those with more knowledge and experience.

If we’re talking about speed, there is one stage where it matters a great deal, and that’s the final process of filling and closing the bottles.

That process has to be prepared flawlessly, carried out with good technology, and kept as short as possible. The goal is for the wine to suffer as little as possible during bottling and to keep in the bottle all the quality we achieved earlier in the vineyard and the cellar.

So in making wine you shouldn’t look for the faster way, but for the right way. In the final stage, speed and precision become an important part of keeping its quality.

13. What were you taught that you’ve since stopped doing?

The tradition of winemaking in my family goes back generations, to my father, my grandfathers, and my great-grandfathers. They made wine as well as the means of their time allowed, without modern enological products, without today’s technology, and often with very limited protection for the vineyards.

They worked with what they had, with varieties that didn’t always give quality grapes, and the weather made production even harder.

That kind of wine often wasn’t stable. After only three months it could change noticeably, and often it spoiled. But people back then were used to wines like that and considered them completely normal.

Sometimes I wonder whether those same people would even accept the wines we make today. Their expectations and habits were completely different. On the other hand, I’m sure today’s market wouldn’t accept the wines that were made then.

That’s why I believe tradition should be respected, but not followed blindly. What I learned from my ancestors is valuable as experience and as part of our family history, but many of the practices from that time simply don’t work in modern winemaking anymore.

Today we have knowledge, technology, and possibilities they didn’t have, and I think it would be wrong not to use them. Respecting tradition doesn’t mean staying trapped in the past.

14. Is there a tank or a piece of equipment around here that has a name?

In every winery there’s some piece of equipment everyone knows well, especially when it decides to stop working at the worst possible moment. If anything here deserved its own name, it would probably be the equipment that gave us the most trouble. Things like that become part of the everyday stories in the cellar over time.

15. When someone who knows nothing about wine walks in, what do they already know that you can build on?

Wine is bought by connoisseurs and by people who know almost nothing about it. But I’ve learned through experience that you don’t always need a lot of expert knowledge to judge a wine honestly.

I have a friend who knows practically nothing about wine, but he comes to the winery regularly and I always give him whatever we’re making to taste.

What’s interesting is that his reactions and comments are often just as valuable to me as expert scores, and sometimes more. He doesn’t analyze the wine. He doesn’t talk about aromas, acids, or technical processes. His verdict comes down to two words: good, or not good.

And that’s exactly where I see the value of his opinion. He experiences wine as an ordinary consumer, without prejudice and without any need to show how much he knows.

In the end, we make wine for the people who will enjoy it. They are the ones who will best tell us whether we’ve succeeded.

16. When someone pours your wine for a stranger, what do they need to know that isn’t in the tasting notes?

I think that person doesn’t actually need to know anything about wine. I find it much more interesting to watch someone tasting our wine for the first time: the look on their face, their gestures, their spontaneous reaction. Sometimes that reaction tells you more than any comment.

Of course, tastes differ, and you can’t expect every wine to please everyone. There are objective differences in wine quality, but there are also personal preferences that shouldn’t be ignored.

Those who know wine better might recognize the variety on the first taste, the region the wine comes from, and some of its particular characteristics.

Those who don’t know much about wine will simply say whether they like it or not.

Both reactions are valuable to me. However much we winemakers strive for expertise and top quality, in the end the simplest thing matters too: that the person drinking our wine enjoys it.

17. What would someone have to watch you do to understand this wine?

I think first of all you’d have to get to know the people behind the wine, and understand their work, their knowledge, and the effort they put into making it.

You’d have to see that we don’t make adulterated wines, and that our goal is to make top-quality wine, respecting all the laws of the natural process and applying expert knowledge and modern technology.

It’s important to understand that making wine is a process that takes time. Wine can’t be made overnight. It needs time, patience, proper care, and aging to reach its full quality.

I believe a person who had the chance to follow that whole process, from the vineyard to the finished bottle, would understand much better what actually stands behind a quality wine.

And only then, in my opinion, could they fully grasp its true value.

18. What’s your favorite wine that you don’t make?

When we talk about top red wines, for me the king among them is certainly Plavac Mali. I consider it one of the most valuable and most distinctive Dalmatian varieties.

Unfortunately, we can’t grow Plavac Mali in our area, in Strmendolac, at least not in conditions that would let it show its full quality.

We’re located where the continental and Mediterranean climates meet, while Plavac Mali is a distinctly Mediterranean variety that needs particular climate conditions and sites to develop its full potential.

That’s exactly why I especially appreciate top wines made from Plavac Mali. On the right site it can give exceptional wines, rich in character and strength and in the particular nature of our Dalmatian land.

19. When you make a great one, do you know right away?

Right at the start, from the quality of the grapes and the first stages of production, I can have a sense that the wine will be exceptionally good. But I can never say so with certainty until the very end.

Making wine is a long and complex process in which a lot has to come together to get a top result.

Along the way the wine goes through different stages of development and maturation, and each of them can affect its final quality.

So however much experience you have and however good the early signs are, only when the wine has gone through every stage of production and is ready for the bottle can you judge its quality with more certainty.

That’s the challenge of winemaking. You can have great expectations, but you must never take the final result for granted.

20. One pour, one stranger. Which wine, and what do you say before they taste it?

That’s a very interesting and thoughtful question, and there isn’t just one answer to it.

I think I’d choose different wines in different situations. It all depends on the season, the food, and the setting, but most of all on the person at the table with me.

I often joke that there are three kinds of wine: the laughing wine, the crying wine, and the quarreling wine. In Croatian, vino smijalica, vino plačkalica, and vino svađalica.

So before I poured that stranger a glass, I’d try to get at least a little sense of what kind of person they are, what mood they’re in, and what the occasion is.

Wine isn’t just a drink. It can change your mood, start a conversation, relax a person, stir up emotions, and sometimes something else entirely.

So I’d have to judge carefully who I’m drinking with, so that I don’t accidentally change their character with my choice of wine! (laughs)

And what would I say before they taste it? Probably nothing special. I’d pour the wine and we’d see which of my three categories it belongs in.

What does this work take from you that people don’t see?

It takes a lot of time, a lot of nerves, and sometimes sleep. People see a glass of wine and a beautiful vineyard, and maybe they think it’s a quiet, romantic job. But behind that glass are years of work, worry, and uncertainty.

When you plant a vineyard, you have to be patient. A small first harvest is possible after two or three years, but for a serious crop and a fully mature vineyard you need six to eight years, depending on the variety and the growing conditions.

All that time you invest, you work, and you wait, and you have no guarantee that nature will pay you back the way you planned.

In this work you’re never completely at peace. Even when you think you’ve done everything right, nature can surprise you.

When did you plant Crljenak Kaštelanski in Strmendolac, and where did the vines come from?

We planted Crljenak Kaštelanski in 2005, at the urging of my great friend Zlatan Plenković and together with him. The vines came all the way from Napa Valley in California.

Zlatan believed in the variety and its potential, and I believed in his knowledge and experience. That’s how Crljenak found its place in our vineyard in Strmendolac too.

Is there one vintage you remember more than the others, and what was happening in your life that year?

The one I remember most is 2014, but unfortunately not for good reasons. It was an exceptionally rainy year, with a lot of storms and thunder, and because of that the grapes couldn’t ripen properly.

Despite all our effort, the wine didn’t reach the quality we wanted, and we decided not to release it.

For us, 2014 remains a gap in our production. We lost the whole harvest, a year of work and investment. It’s one of those years that remind you how much you depend on nature in this work, whatever your knowledge and effort.

What did Zlatan Plenković teach you that you still do today?

Zlatan set a very high bar in winemaking. He made only top wines and didn’t accept compromises when quality was at stake.

From him I learned that the bar must never be lowered. With a friend and role model like that, I never even considered making a wine that wouldn’t meet such high standards.

I still hold to that principle today.

Dražan Krolo answered the twenty questions, and four follow-up questions, in writing, in Croatian, in November 2026. His answers have been translated into English and edited lightly for clarity.