mountains – content.whygo.com

The Dingac wine region near Dubrovnik is one of the smallest and most unique producers of red wines in the Mediterranean latitudes. It also produces some of the best wine in Europe.

The key to the Dingac wine, like all wine, is the crop of grapes. The key grapes in this case are known as the Plavac Mali grapes, which grow on the south side of a restricted peninsula in southern Dalmatia known as the Peljesac peninsula. The tiny 2 km patch that house the grapes is called the Dingac region.

The grapes grow in such a specific location, that families tending the grapes could not transplant them to the other side of a short hill and instead spent their time walking up and down the mountains each day to tend the grapes or riding donkeys with their tools.

Because of this, in the 1970’s the wine growing families pooled their money and constructed a tunnel through the mountain running about a half a kilometer in length so that they could go to work on their crop of grapes without having to go up and over the entire hill. Only workers with the Dingac grapes tend their plants after traversing through a tunnel each day to get to the plants and Dingac has enjoyed some extra notoriety because of this.

Dingac wines are a part of Croatian culture. Most oenophiles and food critics recognize Dingac and could tell you where it came from. Perhaps because of that, Dingac is protected under the international Geneva Convention, perhaps the only wine protected under a treaty in Europe. The wine itself is noted for its dark red color and distinguished aroma. The wine is credited with a full and harmonious taste, that errs toward being slightly sweet as it goes down.

Dingac wine is exclusively red wine and the Plavac Mali grapes are so sensitive that tiny changes like the angle of the sun and the position of the hill change the way that the grapes taste. These positions and angles have been refined in the Dingac region for the last 470 years at least, but the tradition of winemaking in the area goes back even farther than that, to the very first people to inhabit the peninsula.

Of all the parks in all of Croatia, Sjeverni Velebit Park is the youngest. Sjeverni Velebit, which translates to mean “northern part of the Velebite mountain chain,” was declared a national park in 1999 by the Croatian government and today hosts many visitors to its walking trails and soaring mountain peaks each year.

The park is also home to the highest meteorological station in Croatia.

The park is 109 square kilometers in size and there are 30 peaks higher than 1300 m tall in Sjeverni Velebit, making it one of the biggest mountain ranges in Croatia. Although most of the park rises up and over Croatia, most of the visitors to the park are interested in going underground, into the caves scattered throughout the mountains. Spelunkers unite at Lukina Jama, the largest cave in the park, which drops 1,392 m into the ground and at the cave system Cerovacke Pecine. Three small caves called upper, middle and lower cave extend between 2,682 m and 390 m down into the ground.

Lukina Jama was only recently discovered by a team of professors and students studying caves on Mt Velebit in 1993. On August 7th, at 9:45, the team reached the bottom of the caves, declaring it the biggest hole in the ground in Croatia and one of the 20 largest caves in the world.

Because Sjeverni Velebit is so new, the park is still not as highly trafficked as some of the other, more famous parks around Croatia. It also does not charge admission or require you to register before your arrival like several of the other tourist-heavy parks in Croatia do. Sjeverni Velebit is one of the few places where you can get away from it all without stumbling upon another group trying to do exactly the same thing.