Bucavac Babic Vineyards

Why it is worth your time

The Babic vineyards on Bucavac are the most celebrated piece of agriculture in Croatia: the slopes above the sea south of Primosten are furrowed by thousands of small stone partitions into a regular net, a honeycomb of dry-stone walls that labourers stacked bare-handed for centuries, prying out the rock so that between it might fit a handful of red earth and a Babic vine. The sight is so striking that a photograph of Primosten's vineyards, as the local story likes to point out, represented Croatian persistence in New York too, and the landscape is protected as a cultural good and a candidate for world heritage.

Because of the meagre stone the Babic of Bucavac gives little grape, but dense and mighty, so Primosten's dark wines are among the most esteemed of Dalmatia; tasting rooms in town and the taverns around tell that story over a glass. The best view of the honeycomb offers itself from the road toward Kremik and from the lookouts above the bay, and whoever wants closer may take the paths between the partitions, with the plea that the dry walls not be climbed or unpicked: every stone here was once laid by someone's hand.