Waupaca's Wine of the Sea sells rare wines aged under the Adriatic Sea
Waupaca isn’t exactly the first place people think of when it comes to wine.
Yet over the past year, people from all over the country have headed to this Wisconsin town for wines you can’t get anywhere else in the country. Aged underwater in the Adriatic Sea for more than a year, these exclusive red and white wines, are from Wine of the Sea.
A unique set of connections brought these wines to Wisconsin. It begins with BZ Consortium (bzconsortium.com), a small wine importer based in Waupaca. Zarko Bogojevic, who is from Serbia, met his wife while she was traveling there, and they moved to Wisconsin, where she was from. They built their small wine import company on their connections to the old country.
Several years ago at Vinexpo, a wine and spirits trade show, they discovered a Serbian connection to wines being aged in the Adriatic Sea. They took on the challenge of bringing them to the United States, and in 2022 they brought in the first 500 bottles.
Wine of the Sea bottles are submerged up to 100 feet underwater for up to 22 months, and each receives a hands-on inspection of the cork and seal before being sealed again with wax and packaged for shipping.
But there were concerns from the FDA about the wines, and bringing Wine of the Sea to the U.S. took several years and a letter-writing campaign. That’s where Nick Wood entered the process.
A Green Bay resident with a career in newspapers and publishing, Wood helped with letters, then became a partner with Bogojevic in Wine of the Sea.
Currently, Wine of the Sea ages 15 varietals in the sea for up to two years in special cages. Coral grows on the bottles, making each one unique. Last year, BZ Consortium’s first 500 bottles sold out immediately. This year, they’ve imported 6,000 bottles, with 1,500 sold in the first month.
Wine of the Sea is available primarily within a 60-mile radius of Waupaca, with shipping to other states available through a New York retailer. Go to wineofthesea.com for information and retail locations, which include select Woodman’s and Festival Foods. In the Milwaukee area, the wines will be available at Festival Foods in Hales Corners starting this month.
Wood talked about Wine of the Sea, and how Wisconsin is at the forefront of introducing this product to new consumers.
From publishing to partner in Wine of the SEa
A former colleague in Waupaca introduced me to BZ Consortium, Biljana and Zarko Bogojevic. They told the story of the wine aged under the ocean, but they could not import it because of an FDA advisory. The TTB (Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau) is the ultimate agency that approves labels. The FDA advised the TTB not to approve any labels because of concerns with wine aged under the ocean.
It was so unexpected. I was caught up in the story — this mom and pop wine and spirits importer in Waupaca trying to get approval for wine aged in the Adriatic. I said sure, I’ll write a letter to the FDA using my journalistic communication skills. I thought that would be it. It turned into a two-and-half-year odyssey of research and talking with the folks in Croatia who do the submersion. That company is called Adriatic Shell. It started as an oyster farm.
BZ Consortium started importing wine and spirits in Waupaca in 2019. Zarko is from Serbia. He had a career in construction and the restaurant business. They moved here (where the wife has roots) and started to import wine with friends from the old country. One was a distiller, Perun. They do vodka and gin, among other things.
Then another friend had a top-notch boutique winery, white wines and sparkling from Slovenia. They had those two that they started with, then went to this huge trade show, Vinexpo. It is in New York every year. They went in 2019. The wife was walking around and came to this coral-encrusted bottle of wine, from Erdevik winery from Serbia. She stopped in her tracks, got Zarko, and said, look at this. They started talking in Serbian, said, 'Can we represent the winery in the U.S.?' It wasn’t even Wine of the Sea at the time. The owner said we’d like that, but it is not legal in the United States. Zarko said, we’d like to give it a try.
He wrote to the FDA, got no response, wrote again, and eventually a lawyer in Waupaca wrote on letterhead and asked for permission. That one got a polite, ‘People have tried this and no one has satisfied our concerns about filth or adulteration.’ That was July 2020. I was introduced to it that August. The letter of approval came in April 2022.
Make plans now if you want to try this unique wine
Adriatic Shell sources the wine from Italy, France and Germany. They find it, bring it to Croatia right on the Adriatic, prepare the bottles, submerge them for a year, retrieve the bottles, condition and send to the United States. We distribute them from Waupaca. The whole process takes 18 months to two years from start to finish.
No one was prepared for a full-on U.S. distribution after breaking into the United States market. We’re in the process of ramping up now. We just got our last shipment of this year: 1,700 bottles.
It began with a happy accident
It started as an experiment, a passion project about 10-plus years ago, fairly accidentally. Adriatic Shell, originally an oyster farm, is on an island (but) is based on the mainland. They take a boat, and they have a platform attached to the shore, the base of operations for the oyster farm. Italy is right there, like Michigan to Wisconsin around Lake Michigan.
Winemakers would come with their new vintages, taste wines with seafood. They had a bunch of wine leftover. They didn’t want to take it back to the mainland. The owner of Adriatic Shell put a bunch of bottles in an oyster bag, put it over the side, forgot about it. They came back next season, pulled it up. It was coral-encrusted. They tasted the wine and sent it to the winemaker and said, 'Hey, this wine changed.' That was the happy accident that started the whole thing. For the last 10 years he has been experimenting and growing the process.
Ocean accelerates wine aging
We don’t make wine. We source the best wines from the best regions... Italy, France, Germany and Serbia.
I was not a wine drinker. I’m a beer drinker because I’m from Wisconsin. Now I’m learning the intricacies of wine. ... We’ve got some Barolos, Barbaresco, Amarone, Soave and Brunello di Montalcino. We finally started getting some Bordeaux. We have a limited supply of French Chablis. ...
Look at Barolo and Amarone — these are big, bold, Italian wines, designed to age. The ocean-aging process, the science is just starting to come in a little bit. It is art, it is science, a little bit of both. Wine is a living thing. We think the pressure and temperature, the currents and movements of the bottles down there, the darkness, seems to accelerate the aging by three to five years.
Start with these sips
The one that got this started, Deux Mers, which means two seas, named for the winery itself located on the 45th parallel just like Napa. That one is a Bordeaux-style blend, which means 50 percent cabernet, 26 percent syrah and 24 percent merlot. That one is the most recognizable, the most approachable for an American audience. It is honestly one of the most delicious.
The Amarone, it is a fairly famous style of Italian wine, they dry the grapes before they press them so the flavors are really intense. That wine in particular reacts to the ocean-aging process.
The packaging and process that make this work
One of the main concerns from the FDA was the seawater would get into the wine, making it adulterated. One of our processes (after it is pulled up from the sea) is we remove the top cap of wax, inspect visually and verify by hand the cork, then we redip it in wax and put a seal on it. The bottles have two different colors of wax. That was a huge concern of the FDA. Now it is a signature of the hand craftsmanship of the process.
Where to find Wine of the Sea ocean-aged wines
We’re working to get into the Milwaukee and Madison stores. ... We’re an importer and distributor just in Wisconsin. We’re servicing a 60-mile radius of Waupaca. Our biggest outlets right now are the BP gas stations in Waupaca. We’ve had people drive in from Minneapolis, Milwaukee and Chicago to buy cases. We even had a couple who flew in from Las Vegas. ... The wine is getting known.
Our biggest challenge is national distribution. In October we added a brand ambassador and sales rep in New York and one in California. We’ve sold more wine in the last six weeks than we have in the last six months.
This isn’t an everyday bottle
In Wisconsin, you’ll find at retail it is going to be the Deux Mers, entry levels will be around $130, give or take. Some of the unique Barolos coming in, those will be pushing the $200 mark.
Fork. Spoon. Life. explores the everyday relationship that local notables have with food. To suggest future personalities to profile, email clewis@journalsentinel.com.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Waupaca's Wine of the Sea sells rare wines aged under the Adriatic Sea
