Pošip: The Serious Croatian White That Outgrows Chardonnay

Pošip is pronounced POH-ship.

If you want Chardonnay's body without the oak and the markup, this is the bottle. Pošip is a dry, full-bodied white from the island of Korčula that tastes of citrus, yellow stone fruit and a dry almond edge, all sitting on a line of sea salt. It rewards the same drinker who reaches for white Burgundy or a good Viognier, and it costs less because almost no one outside Croatia has heard of it yet.

What it tastes like

Pošip has weight. Pour it next to a lean Italian white and you feel the difference on the tongue: this one has flesh, a mid-palate that fills out rather than darts past. The fruit runs toward lemon and grapefruit pith, ripe pear and yellow peach, with a bitter almond note on the back end that keeps everything from going soft.

Underneath the fruit is the part that matters: a saline, faintly herbal minerality that reads as savory rather than sweet. The acidity is moderate, not racy, so the wine feels composed instead of tart. Most versions land between 12 and 14.5 percent alcohol. The lighter, stainless-steel bottlings drink fresh and citrusy; the fuller, sometimes barrel-touched ones move toward vanilla and dried fruit and can carry a few years in the cellar. Either way, you get a white with structure you can taste.

Why Korčula kept it to itself

Pošip grows where it was born. It was first documented in 1864 in the village of Smokvica on Korčula, a long, wooded island off the southern Dalmatian coast, and DNA work has since shown it to be a natural cross of two other local grapes, Bratkovina bijela and Zlatarica blatska. It is, in other words, entirely Korčulan by parentage.

The island gave it two more distinctions. In 1967 Pošip from the Čara–Smokvica field became the first Croatian white wine granted protected origin status, decades before the country's wines reached export shelves. And a good deal of it still grows on its own original rootstock, having come through the phylloxera epidemic that forced most of Europe to graft its vines onto American roots after the 1800s. Like a village that missed the war because the road never reached it, Korčula's isolation preserved something the mainland lost. The grape stayed local, made mostly for people who lived there, which is exactly why you are only meeting it now.

Bottles to look for

A few producers have carried Pošip out into the wider world, and their names are the ones to search first. Krajančić, run by Luka Krajančić in Čara, is the reference point many drinkers start with and makes both fresh and more ambitious styles. Toreta, in Smokvica, is a reliable, traditional grower. Korta Katarina, on the Pelješac peninsula across the water, makes a polished version aimed squarely at export markets. And Grgić Vina, the Croatian estate founded by the same Miljenko Grgich who put Napa Chardonnay on the map in 1976, bottles a Pošip that tends to be the easiest of the group to find in the United States.

Rooting for a grape like this is the whole point of the site: a wine that survived phylloxera, earned its country's first white appellation, and still can't get a fair hearing next to Chardonnay because the name looks unfamiliar on a list. Here is the honest part. I haven't sat with enough bottles to put a number on Pošip yet, so you won't find a score at the top of this page; the tasting shorthand here leans on producers and critics who work the grape daily, and a scored review lands once I've poured through a proper run of them.

Where to buy

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US availability is real but uneven: a handful of producers, mostly Grgić Vina and a few importers, get it onto shelves and to online retailers, so you may need to check stock rather than assume it. Start your search here and let availability guide the producer.

browse Pošip on Wine.com →

If you're switching from a famous grape

If Chardonnay is your default white, Pošip gives you the body and texture you like with more salt and less oak, and at a price the famous name stopped offering years ago. If you lean toward Viognier for the stone-fruit perfume, you'll find a drier, more savory cousin here. See the full case in Wines Like Chardonnay, then Order This Instead.

Part of Lesser-Known Wines: 17 Obscure Grapes Worth Switching To — the full underdog-swap guide.

— Chris Berry