Wine and Eco tourism

Our morning started with waking up in the nice place hostel in Podgorica after a good night sleep. After showering and a little breakfast the group was divided and signed for different tasks like picking up our cars, getting a Montegrin sim card and keeping our readers updated via social media.

When the cars finally arrived after conquering a few minor complications we made our way to our first business partner called Plantaže. Plantaže is the biggest winery in the Balkans. The company was founded in 1963 and 51% is owned by the government. They have 310ha of land with 11.5 million grapes from which most of it is Vranic. They also have one special sort of grapes called Krstac, which only grows in Montenegro. They produce 250 million kg of grapes and they produce 17million bottles of wine every year, which are stored in their 3 wine cellars. Plantaže is represented all over the world except Africa. Most of the products are either consumed in the country or exported to the neighbouring countries e.g. Serbia, Russia and Croatia. They used to produce peach brandy as well but had to stop as the demand was not high enough.

We arrived at the gate on time and were picked up by our guide and the company representative Dijana. She took us on a tour through the plantation. First stop was at the Montegrin Niagra Falls, which was stunning. Afterwards we were taken to the view point to listen to a short presentation about the company but as it was hot and sunny we headed to the coolness of one of the wine cellars, shortly after. In the wine cellar we continued the tour and were able to ask all the questions we had. The tour was followed by a delicious lunch prepared of local products. The lunch was accompanied by wine tasting where we could try the local wines produced by the company. When finished with the lunch we had the chance to buy the wines we tasted from the company store. After our productive meeting we headed back to the Montenegrin Niagara Falls to wait for our last group member to arrive and have fun jumping into the ice cold mountain river.

Later that day our way took us to the mountains to meet our second business partner of the day called Vila Jelka. The eco village, led by Miki Bulatovic provides environmentally friendly accommodation in small mountain hutsaway from everything.  At first we thought that the trip to Villa Jelka would be short and the location would be close to Kolasin, one of the bigger cities of Montenegro. However, the way up to 1800m over sea was hard and adventurous. This one-hour drive to the top was filled with tight curves, small and uneven roads and many holes in the ground. Also the temperature was a big surprise for us. Although it is summer in Montenegro the temperature in Villa Jelka was about 5 degrees. After arriving to the traditional shepherd huts the host family served us a delicious dinner with home-made ingredients. The Business Meeting with Miki was right after the amazing dinner. He told us a lot about the foundation and the purpose of Villa Jelka and provided interesting information about tourism in Montenegro. After the Meeting we returned to our fire-heated shepherd huts, where we spent a cold but comfortable night.