Even then, I had vowed that, when the opportunity arose, I would use that unusually beautiful, sweet and symbolic name and also job what I would do. Of course, with the founding of the winery, and especially with my belief that wine production is my mission on the path to making people happy, that promise of mine had to come to the surface.
Respect for human labor
Some people like to joke and paraphrase that Latin inscription in such a way that I thank the Lord that people drink my wine! In any case, I experience the wine business as a great respect for human labor, the art of creation, the art of living, and the House of a Happy Man as the name of the winery is simply – ideal.
Whether Ivan Primojević was truly so happy that he carved a description of his condition on the facade of his house will never be known with certainty. However, Nikša Mimica is already loudly exclaiming that the name of his winery does in fact reflect his happiness and satisfaction. There are countless indicators for that. First of all, he is happy that, currently as the only Mimica, he has managed to preserve the wine-growing and winemaking tradition of the surname, which has been recognized for generations precisely for its wine. He is also happy that his children, daughter Petra, who graduated in agronomy, and son Marko, who is in the first year of the Faculty of Winemaking in Poreč, will continue this tradition. He is also happy about the recent planting of as many as seven new varieties in his vineyards, among which are, rarity and, probably, only in Dalmatia, the Cibiba and Omiška Vugava vines. He is happy, he adds, because after a long search, he finally found several vines of the true Omiška rose on Hvar, and he is convinced that he will no longer call his most famous wine, a blend of Plavac, Mićuša and Okač with that name, in honor of the variety that was believed to have completely disappeared.
The Omiška rose in the wine's name only meant my desire to preserve the Muscat rose from this region, at least on paper, so that people would not forget where the variety originated. The commercial name of my wine, Omiška ruža, has nothing to do with the variety. However, it seems that it paid off to be persistent, and it is very possible that the real Omiška rose will be resurrected in the Omiš region, and we will not talk about it only through the statements of Antonio Fortis or Marmont. Namely, a few years ago we discovered the existence of the Omiška rose in Vrboska on Hvar.
The name was lost, but not the variety
When we were convinced of the existence of the variety and saw what it was and what it was like, we realized that there were still several vines of that variety in several vineyards around Omiš. We sent clones to an institute in Germany, from where we are waiting for the DNA of that variety. This means that the Omiška rose was not lost as a variety after all, but only as a name. You know the saying – when the name is lost, the man is lost too! Here we are, on the return of the revitalization of the Omiška rose in the homeland of that variety, says Nikša Mimica.
He is also happy that with seven vines from an old vineyard on the northern side of the Omiš Dinara, which DNA analysis determined to be ancient Tribidrag (Zinfandel), he fulfilled his father's wish not to give up on these grapes, which Mihovil Pavlinović, the leader of the Croatian Cultural National Revival in Dalmatia, spoke so positively about in the old days: The little Turkish girl boasted that there was no Turk more beautiful, a Turk and a Kaurin, and that she would not marry any young hero who did not have a stone courtyard, a marble gate, a yellow apple planted among them, and among them a Tribidrag vine, which is good enough for half of Constantinople.
This is probably the greatest valorization of that variety in history, when someone tells you that a certain one is worth half of the then largest city in the world! When I cleared the old vineyard on the northern side of the Omiška Dinara in Svinišće, I went there with the late vintner Zlatan Plenković and oenologist Ivica Kovačević to see what could be planted there. Ivica tells me to plant a Plavac mali to which I replied: Fuck Plavac mali that can't see the sea! I remember that Plenković laughed so sweetly at those words, admitting that he had never heard anything smarter about Plavac mali.
It has always been pribidrag, not tribidrag
In the end, like countless times before, I followed the advice of my now-deceased father and decided to plant pribidrag. I know, now the next question is why I say pribidrag and not tribidrag, so I will answer that right away. In these areas, this variety has been called that throughout history. I used to call my wine Pribidrag, before the media revealed Tribidrag! On the other hand, Tribidrag was the name used for that variety on the islands, while here in Podašpilje and Omiš it has always been - pribidrag.
It desappierd because of its early ripening
By the way, vineyards in Dalmatia were always cultivated with several varieties, so Pribidrag disappeared from those vineyards because of its very early ripening. He would come 20 days earlier than the others, especially the Plavac mali, and the birds would simply eat him or the bees or wasps would atack him. Then, in that vineyard, it was necessary to harvest or thresh that variety, separate that variety and make wine or prosecco from it, says Nikša Mimica.
How much Pribidrag was appreciated, but also desired by women, explains Nikša, is sufficiently demonstrated by numerous historical parables about the production of desert wine out of that variety: It was given to girls, or rather daughters, before going to a dance, to drink a little and blush so that they would be more free when a man approached them. We all knew the lyrics: Pribidrag, dear and lovely to every girl, winks and raises the mug. When Nikša talks about his happiness in the House of a Happy Man, he inevitably emphasizes that a man who deals with wine must be fulfilled to the maximum.
This creation of love and the desire for perfection don't leave you much room to do anything else. For me, wine is a medium of socializing, a lifestyle, a way of expressing myself, a way of communicating with the world, a link that connects me with people and enriches me with new experiences. Wine simply makes me happy!
By the way, Nikša likes to say that he met the barrel before the cradle.
My grandfather Niko, who was a unique personality and well-known throughout the area, had the greatest wish that his first grandchild would be a boy. When my mother brought me from the maternity hospital and when they parked the car in front of the house, he took me in his arms, took me down to the tavern in our basement where he prepared sweet wine Prošek and a rooster feather on a shallow plate.
Grandfather smeared me with dessert wine
Then he smeared me with that wine and made a cross on my head. Only after that did they carry me to the room in the cot prepared for me!
Nikša explains that his family has documented ties to winemaking since 1714. Winemaking was a fundamental family task for every Mimica house, until they started sending their children to school and until tourism began.
Today, only my family out of all the Mimica's is involved in winemaking! I was also the one who pulled myself together at the last minute. You know what the situation was like after World War II, everything was moving towards the cities, and people from Mimice are born with a small high school diploma. Immediately after birth every person from Mimice is 15 years old in an intellectual sense…
More Mimica's are in Zagreb than in Mimice
Without me, I don’t know if there are a total of 1,000 vines in Mimice and Pisak today! But, in any case, I have finally renewed the tradition, the children will continue this business, my Mimice branch will remain in winemaking!
Until the end of World War II, Nikša's family lived off grapes and wine, cherries, salt, and up towards Bosnia they also had some estates and were engaged in grain production, had their own mills, oil mill, winery... There was no wine, there were sheep, cows and they could only sustain with milk. Then the father planted vineyards on the southern and northern sides of the Omiš Dinaraz. During times of Yugoslavia the family constantly produced half a wagon of wine, mainly for their own needs. The father only sold a little, just enough to feed his sons and send them to school. Nikša's wine story probably wouldn't have survived and would have ended like all the people of Mimice if his father had not stubbornly worked in the vineyard until his death at the age of 88. And insisted that Nikša drive him to the vineyard every time.
I was the oldest son of my father. And then my father, who had never driven a car, but he needed one to go to the vineyards, decided to buy one when I was 17. So I was forced to learn to drive and for a while I drove the car without a driver's license! It was a Fiat 600, an Italian car with open doors, and it had a radio. There weren't many cars in Omiš at the time, and I was certainly the youngest driver. And so, driving my father with, I lived a life that was both a student and a farmer and a winemaker and a winegrower...
I worked the way I learned from my father
In the morning I would bring him to the vineyard, and he would say to me: Do you have the heart to leave your father to work alone? And then I would not go to the lecture but stay and work with him. My father was my main mentor, everything I learned in the vineyard and about wine came from him. He lived to be 88, and for the last ten years of his life, while we were together, he practically handed over the reins to me. The only thing I managed to do differently from him was to separate the stems. Everything else, both then and later, I did the way it was done 60 years ago and as I had seen from my father.
Ten years ago, Nikša decided to plant a hobby vineyard for his own needs, as he likes to call it. There were 780 vines, half white, half black. At the time, he didn't know anything about Pribidrag or the Ruža Omiška, but he quickly became emotionally attached to the vines that he had visited and cultivated with his father for decades, in other locations.
When my wife and I came up with my son, my little Marko, who was eight years old at the time, after planting, I took him by the hand and went with him to see if the vines had started to sprout. On one of them, I saw that a bud was slowly starting to open. Instinctively, I knelt down, kissed the vine, and shed a tear of joy.
Mom, Dad was crying!
Then my Marko came home dejected. My wife asked him: Marko, what’s wrong with you? He said: Mom, Dad was crying! Mother then had to explain to him at length what tears of joy were. Anyway, the next time we came back to the village, I invited Marko to go to the vineyard to see what was happening with the vines, but he didn’t want to go with me. He just told his mother that he didn’t want to see me cry again!
Nikša is happy that his children, in addition to wine, have developed a love for music. Although he never fulfilled his youthful dream of forming a Klapa with his friends and competing to perform at the famous Omiš Festival of Dalmatian Klapas, he proudly points out that his daughter graduated piano in music school, and his son plays the trumpet and sings in the klapa Puntara and the Omiš Octet.
I played the trumpet for a while in Omiš and sang in taverns, betulas, kalamas... There's that song Konobo moja (My Tavern) that describes what a tavern means to us Dalmatians. We work in Konoba, but is also an institution, both cultural and philosophical...
I drank, never getting drunk
I spent a lot of time in that Konoba of mine with my dear friends consuming wine and never getting drunk. And then the moment came when my father's vineyards came to an end. Then I planted a hobby vineyard of my own, which actually lit a fuse in me and led to the commercialization of my wine story. And for that I am immensely happy!