The Father's Farmer Wine & the Mystical Hills
Podrum Franjo — "Franjo's Cellar" — is where the Krešo Petreković story begins. Krešo, Croatian-born with roots in Istria, grew up watching his father Franjo craft his own "farmer wine" for the family — Franjo being no ordinary hobbyist but a third-category sommelier since 1993 who organised annual wine judgings with the Wine Academy of the Agrokor Sommelier Club. Krešo left for New York, where he became, in the words of his Swedish importer, a gastronomic legend — years in the wine trade importing the living wines of the world. After years of travelling the globe, and Croatia in particular, he realised the immense potential of his homeland's terroir — and in 2016 he released his first vintage under a label named for the man who started it all. The philosophy: natural winemaking from indigenous varieties in old vineyards, to show what this region is truly capable of. The fruit comes from longtime family friends farming 40 to 100-year-old vines on the limestone-rich, high-altitude hills of Plešivica outside Zagreb — "the mystical hills, where the forest meets the daylight" — and across the border in Slovenian Lower Styria. The grapes are a roll-call of the region's living history: Štajerka, Sipalj, Kraljevina, Plavec, Šmarnica, Žametna črnina, Blauer Kölner, Frankinja (Blaufränkisch), Laški and Rajnski Rizling, Sivi Pinot, Yellow Muscat — varieties that are slowly disappearing but live on here. Short macerations for freshness, spontaneous fermentations, a year of rest in steel and old Slovenian oak, nothing fined, nothing filtered, little or nothing added. In 2021, Vogue named Hinuk one of the 10 best orange wines in America. Four years later, Krešo would take the same philosophy to the Adriatic and found Vinas Mora — but Podrum Franjo remains the first chapter: a son bottling his father's farmer wine for the world.
From Zagreb's Highlands to New York & Back Again
The Petreković family story runs through two grandfathers — a Zagorac and a Slavonac, men of Croatia's continental hills — down to Franjo Petreković, who turned the inherited love of the vine into a lifelong craft. Franjo made his own wine for the family — honestly, naturally, the way farmer wine has always been made — but he was also a serious student of wine: a third-category sommelier from 1993, an organiser of annual wine judgings, an active member of the Wine Academy at the Agrokor Sommelier Club, and eventually the graduate of all three levels of the Croatian Sommelier Club's formal courses. What began as a long-term hobby grew, in 2018, into OPG Franjo Petreković — a dedicated family farm with an emphasis on natural wines, minimal sulphites, and natural cellar production, exporting to Europe and America from the very start.
His son Krešo grew up inside this world — watching his father craft farmer wine for the family table, absorbing the conviction that honest wine needs no cosmetics. But Krešo's own path led abroad: to New York, where he spent years in the wine trade, becoming a respected importer of living wines and a fixture of the city's gastronomic scene. It was there, tasting the world's best natural wines, that the realisation crystallised: after years of travelling the world — and Croatia in particular — the immense potential of his homeland's terroir was impossible to ignore. The old vines were there. The indigenous varieties were there. What was missing was someone to bottle them without apology.
In 2016, Krešo released his first vintage under the name Podrum Franjo — Franjo's Cellar — a tribute to the father who started it all. The model was deliberate: source fruit from old vineyards farmed by longtime friends of the family, work with indigenous, mostly little-known varieties from Plešivica and Styria, and make the wines with the same minimal-intervention philosophy he had spent years importing and championing in New York. The inaugural vintage was a success, and the label has continued ever since — authentic, terroir-driven, raw expressions of a region with a history rich in winemaking tradition. In 2020, the same philosophy would travel south to the Adriatic and become Vinas Mora. But Podrum Franjo remains the origin — the father's farmer wine, carried across an ocean and back.
"The mystical hills, where the forest meets the daylight."
— Krešo Petreković, on the Plešivica vineyards
Plešivica, Lower Styria & the Limestone Hand
Podrum Franjo draws its fruit from two neighbouring worlds of continental Central Europe: the Plešivica highlands outside Zagreb — a Croatian wine region better known for sparkling wines, here revealed in a wilder register — and Lower Styria (Štajerska) across the Slovenian border. These are high-altitude vineyards where the forest presses close to the vines: cool nights, long autumns, and a deeply limestone-rich geology mixed with clay that gives the wines their signature — rustic, yet fresh and mineral.
The vineyards are old — 40 to 100 years of age, depending on the parcel — and farmed organically by longtime friends of the Petreković family, growers who kept their ancient mixed plantings when others ripped them out for international varieties. This is the crucial point: these vineyards are living archives. In their rows survive varieties that most drinkers have never heard of and that are slowly disappearing from the region: Štajerka, Sipalj, Kraljevina, Plavec, Šmarnica among the whites; Žametna črnina (velvet black) and Blauer Kölner among the reds — alongside Frankinja (Blaufränkisch), Sivi Pinot (Pinot Gris), Yellow Muscat, and the two Rieslings, Rajnski (Rhine) and Laški (Welschriesling).
Everything is harvested by hand — the only way to treat centenarian vines and mixed old plantings. The limestone-clay soils, the altitude, the old massal-selection genetics, and the cool continental climate combine into fruit with naturally high acidity, moderate alcohol, and a mineral spine that needs no cellar theatrics. Krešo's insight from his New York years was simple: this fruit, vinified naturally, could stand beside the living wines of the world — not as an imitation of anywhere else, but as the pure expression of a region whose winemaking tradition is centuries deep.
The Plešivica hills outside Zagreb are the heart of the project — high-altitude, limestone-rich vineyards that Krešo calls "the mystical hills, where the forest meets the daylight." Known conventionally for sparkling wine, Plešivica reveals a different soul through Podrum Franjo: old mixed plantings of indigenous varieties, cool nights, and a mineral intensity that shapes every cuvée. The fruit comes from longtime family friends farming vines 40 to 100 years old, organically, without compromise.
Across the border in Slovenian Štajerska — Lower Styria — the project sources Žametna črnina, Blauer Kölner, and Blaufränkisch from equally old vineyards on the same limestone-clay geology. The border here is a modern fiction; the wine culture is one continuous arc of hills, dialects, and shared varieties. By working both sides, Podrum Franjo restores an older map — one where Plešivica and Styria belong to the same wine landscape, and where a variety's passport matters less than its roots.
Štajerka, Sipalj, Kraljevina, Plavec, Šmarnica, Žametna črnina, Blauer Kölner — the Podrum Franjo wines read like a rescue list of Central European viticulture. These are varieties that slowly disappear as old vineyards are replanted, but that live on in the family's friend-farmed parcels: grapes selected over generations for these exact hills, carrying flavours no international variety can replicate. Every bottle is an act of preservation — drinkable heritage from 40 to 100-year-old vines.
The soils across all parcels are clay and limestone — the classic combination of the continental Croatian–Slovenian hills. Limestone gives the wines their fresh, mineral, almost saline edge; clay gives body and the ability to carry old-vine concentration without heaviness. Farmed organically and harvested by hand, the fruit arrives in the cellar with naturally vibrant acidity and moderate sugars — the raw material for wines that are rustic yet fresh, structured yet drinkable, and unmistakably of this place.
Short Macerations, Old Oak & the Importer's Palate
Krešo Petreković makes wine the way he chose wine as an importer: nothing added that doesn't need to be there. The philosophy is natural winemaking of indigenous varieties from old vineyards — but the execution bears the mark of a man who spent years tasting the world's best living wines for a living. The unifying thread across all cuvées is short maceration for freshness and stability — two, three, or four days depending on the wine — followed by spontaneous fermentation with indigenous yeasts in stainless steel or neutral oak, and around a year of ageing in steel, neutral oak, or old Slovenian oak barrels.
There is no fining and no filtration, ever. Sulphur is treated as a last resort rather than a recipe: most cuvées — Hinuk, Muž, Skila, Aubiks, the Kunih Laški Rizling — carry zero added SO₂, with only the Kunih Rajnski Rizling seeing a low addition. The highly calcareous soils do their part, giving wines that are stable, fresh, and mineral without cosmetic intervention. The result, in the importers' words: rustic but fresh and mineral wines — raw, authentic, terroir-driven expressions that taste like the place and nobody else's idea of the place.
The labels deserve a mention of their own: bold, hand-drawn portraits of an antlered man — a deer-crowned figure giving a knowing thumbs-up, rendered in vivid blocks of pink-on-blue, gold, and black. Playful, instantly recognisable, and quietly mythic, they have become some of the most collectible labels in the natural wine world — a wink that says these century-old vines don't take themselves too seriously. The world noticed the wine inside, too: in October 2021, Vogue included Hinuk among the 10 best orange wines in America — a milestone that opened doors to new markets for a father-and-son story from the hills above Zagreb.
The Farmer-Wine Covenant & the Zero-Addition Rule
The guiding principle of Podrum Franjo is that Franjo's farmer wine was right all along — it just needed a wider audience. Indigenous varieties from 40 to 100-year-old vineyards, hand-harvested; short macerations of two to four days for freshness and stability; spontaneous fermentation with indigenous yeasts; about a year of rest in stainless steel, neutral oak, or old Slovenian oak; no fining, no filtration, and no added sulphur in nearly every cuvée. The importer's palate shows in the balance: these are natural wines built for the table — juicy, bright, mineral, drinkable — rather than for the statement. From the mystical hills of Plešivica to the wine lists of New York and Stockholm, the farmer wine travelled across an ocean and came home wearing antlers.
Hinuk, Muž, Aubiks & the Antlered Hand
The Podrum Franjo portfolio is a family of field blends and varietal rescues — each cuvée built from old-vine fruit on clay and limestone, each one spontaneously fermented, unfined, unfiltered, and made with zero or minimal sulphur. Alongside the original range, the Doma ("home") wines continue the family table tradition. Names like Hinuk, Muž, Skila, Aubiks and Kunih carry the dialect and humour of the hills; the antlered labels carry everything else.
The Father's Cellar, the Son's Ocean & the Farmer-Wine Hand
Podrum Franjo is not merely a wine label; it is a homecoming — the story of a son who left the continental hills of Croatia for the wine cellars of New York, tasted the living wines of the world, and came home to prove that his father's farmer wine had been world-class all along. In an era when Croatian wine meant either Dalmatian tradition or international imitation, Krešo Petreković demonstrated a third path: the indigenous varieties of the continental highlands — Štajerka, Sipalj, Kraljevina, Plavec, Žametna črnina — vinified naturally from 40 to 100-year-old vines, and presented without apology to the most demanding wine markets on earth. It is largely thanks to projects like Podrum Franjo that the continental Croatia–Slovenia arc now has a voice in the global natural wine conversation — and that a Vogue editor in New York came to list an orange wine from the hills above Zagreb among the ten best in America.
The legacy of Podrum Franjo is the legacy of the farmer-wine hand, professionalised without being polished away. The label honours Franjo — the sommelier-farmer whose hobby became the family OPG — and extends the lineage backward to the two grandfathers, the Zagorac and the Slavonac, from whom the love was inherited. Krešo is not a typical first-generation winemaker: he is a veteran importer who chose his growers the way he once chose wines for New York lists — longtime family friends, old vines, organic farming, no compromises. He does not chase volume. He does not chase fashion. He makes a handful of cuvées — Hinuk, Muž, Skila, Aubiks, Kunih, and the Doma wines — each one zero- or near-zero-sulphur, unfined, unfiltered, and unmistakably of the mystical hills. The antlered labels are the joke that carries the seriousness: heritage with a wink, farmer wine in a suit.
The future of the project is tied to the survival of the old vineyards themselves — to the friends who keep farming centenarian vines organically, to the varieties that live on only in these rows, and to the family farm that now exports the father's wines to Europe and America. As the Hinuk ages into its Vogue-recognised reputation, as the Muž converts one more drinker to chillable hundred-year-old-vine reds, and as the Dalmatian chapter of Vinas Mora carries the same philosophy to the sea, Podrum Franjo remains what it was named to be: Franjo's cellar — a son who trusted the farmer wine, the old friends, and the limestone hills, and carried them across an ocean and back. The cellar was always there. The world just needed to be shown the door.
"Croatian-born Krešo Petreković grew up watching his father craft his own 'farmer wine' for the family."
— Raisin, on the origins of Podrum Franjo