Give a gift they’ll savour all year long. Gift a Membership Now

Dalmatia's heroic vineyards

Steep stony hillside vineyards of Dingač

While sun-seekers head to Croatia’s beaches, put your tourist dollars to good use and head for these vineyards, where nothing short of heroic efforts have gone into creating and maintaining them, as Caroline Gilby MW explains. Above, the astonishingly steep and stony vineyards of Dingač.

People in southern Croatia like to say that they grew up tough because they were raised on a hot, dry, rocky, karst landscape. The same seems to apply to the vineyards of Dalmatia, where grapevines grow in places no sane person would ever think of farming.

There’s real heroism going into keeping some of these...