Žilavka

Žilavka is the white grape of Herzegovina, grown on the hard limestone karst around Mostar. The stone is white, the summers are long and hot, and the soil is thin to the point of being mostly rock. The name is thought to come from the local word for the veins that show through the skin of a ripe berry.

Those conditions push it to high sugar, so the wines are naturally strong: fourteen degrees of alcohol is normal and more is common. What keeps them upright is a firm acidity that survives the heat, and a distinctly stony, mineral note that growers there credit to the karst. The flavours run to quince, ripe apple, walnut and dried herbs.

It is barely known outside the former Yugoslavia, partly because the war of the 1990s destroyed cellars and interrupted a generation of work. The wineries around Mostar and Čitluk have rebuilt, and the grape is now the flag of a small industry rather than a local curiosity. It is worth the search, because nothing else tastes quite like it.