In Nedešćina, at the gateway to the Labin area, the Licul family has been making wine for more than a century, and the nickname Fuhtar, earned by the grandfather of today’s host, eventually made its way onto the label. The serious wine story began in 2015, when Piero Licul took over production from his father Valter and, with his help, built and equipped a winery of his own, at first a garage winery of the kind that in Istria often precedes bigger things. The vineyards lie around Nedešćina, on red soil at an altitude of about three hundred metres, under the Hrvatska Istra designation of origin. Alongside the existing plantings, the family plans to plant new hectares of Teran in Šumber, a site regarded as one of the best in the Labin area for that variety.
The cellar bottles Malvazija, Teran, Merlot, yellow Muscat and a rosé made by blending Teran and Merlot, which gives it a deeper colour and higher acidity than is usual today. Beside these five regular labels stands the special Vruja line, for which the winery has become known.
Wine that spends a year in an undersea spring
Vruja is the local name for an undersea spring of fresh water, and it is into the one near Ika that the Fuhtars lower cages of bottles and leave them there for a full year, at a depth of twenty-three metres, where the temperature stays constantly between seven and ten degrees and the pressure exceeds two bars. The first Teran to spend a year under the sea this way came from the 2017 vintage and filled only about three hundred bottles, while today the lifting of the cages has grown into the Vino i Vruja event, at which divers bring up thousands of bottles in front of an audience.
They confirmed the quality where it is hardest to do so. Malvazija Vruja 2022 won 91 points and a silver medal at the Decanter World Wine Awards in London in 2025, and the winery had brought home recognition from that competition before, in 2021. That same autumn Beth Willard, wine critic and Decanter co-chair, tasted 235 wines from fifty-two Istrian producers in Poreč for the New Europe Wine Guide and scored Malvazija Vruja 2022 at 93 points, describing it as a steely, mineral-driven wine with green apple and peach and a spicy grapefruit finish. Teran Vruja 2021 received 92 points and the 2024 yellow Muscat 89.
At the end of June 2026 the Fuhtars finally opened their own tasting room, after seven or eight years of moving from one space to another. The new room next to the family house seats around thirty guests, was designed by the architect Marta Licul, Piero’s mother, and the wines are served with an Istrian platter of prosciutto, pancetta, sausages and cheeses.
Website: vinafuhtar.com
