Čelinac // Wines of Love and Spite
Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous // Vinarija Jungić // Facebook.com
According to the last count, around 5,000 people live in the town of Čelinac, with 15,548 in the municipality. The town’s slogan is “Mesto za dobar život”, “A Place for a Good Life”. It borders Laktaši and Prnjavor to the north, Kotor Varoš and Kneževo to the west, Teslić to the east and big boy Banja Luka to the west. All perfunctory information, but nothing particularly necessary to understanding anything about the place, with the possible exception of the neighbouring towns. We are products of our environment, after all.
Of all the settlements in Čelinac, Markovac is the only one without a dedicated Wikipedia page. This means nothing, obviously, although people should give the world’s largest encyclopaedia a bit more respect. No, it isn’t a particularly reliable source of information, but it sure as shit opens the door for you, and all those references down the bottom can often point you in the right direction.
Still, it had nothing on Markovac, a tiny settlement of 160 or so people, a slice of land not far from Banja Luka that was silent, peaceful, beautiful. The sort of place you could easily imagine retiring to, if retiring was an option for the beleaguered travel writer. All that was missing was a crisp glass of wine and a cheeseboard.
That’s a whole lot of wine // © John Bills
This was soon remedied, as a cheerful young fellow in a crisp shirt arrived with cheese, various hams and a bottle of white. My knowledge of wine is minimal at best, and I was reliably informed that this was a bottle of Tamjanika. I wrote the word down, but it still didn’t mean anything to me. The wine itself? Delicious. Exactly what was needed to make this gorgeous setting just that little more special.
We had paid a visit to the first winery set up in these parts, the critically acclaimed and beloved Jungić Winery. Taking its moniker from the family name (as is the norm), Jungić was a passion project that soon turned into a business, a labour of love born out of spite and the desire to show the world that good wine could be produced in this part of the globe. With this climate, these hills, this peace and this many sunny days, how could it not?
Slavko Jungić // © author unknown
The Jungić story goes way beyond the development of wine and the stubborn commitment of Željko Jungić. You could trace the footsteps of the story back to the earliest days of civilisation here, when people made alcohol for personal use, a trend that continues to this very day. Realistically, this particular story begins with Slavko Jungić, a Željko’s uncle, a gifted artist, professor of literature and a professional Bohemian. He wrote poems with no real interest in publishing them, more interested in giving them to waitresses, friends and the like. He died tragically in a car crash in 2002.
His memory lives on in his verses and the literary award named after him, but he also lives on in the beloved winery established by his nephew. Željko’s father was also a fan of wine, and Father took son on a long walk to a neighbouring winemaker when the son was just five or six years old. The ins and outs get a little fuzzy from there, but respect and love for the good stuff were entrenched in the young lad. He eventually went off to study in Krk before doing an internship in Rijeka, where he learnt the ropes when it came to wine. Work eventually brought the young man home, and the burning desire to show that people could find good wine in Čelinac grew and grew until it could grow no more and the only growing left to do involved grapes and vines. Željko Jungić came back to Markovac with a mission.
Many years later, that mission has well and truly been fulfilled. Jungić Winery is now an award-winning wine, one that creates red, white and all the rest, as well as dipping its toes into the wonderful world of rakija, a must in these parts. His little vineyard has grown into an empire, has provided jobs for family and friends, has given the region excellent wine and has proven once and for all that great things can be born out of spite. It still hasn’t gotten Markovac a Wikipedia page, but on the list of importance that ranks somewhere near the very bottom.
