Under the leadership of Milana Spasića, the winery was officially established in 1999. Of course, the family’s involvement in this craft goes back much further. The earliest recorded evidence of the Spasić family’s work with grapes is a document from 1856, preserved in the local heritage museum. It is an agreement on the division of property between the father and the uncle of Milan’s great-great-grandfather. Both were literate men—the father served as a district clerk—and the document states: “…that barrel in the corner of the ‘riznik’ (referring to Italian Riesling, more precisely Graševina), of such-and-such capacity, and then the barrels…”

Tamjanika is a variety that the Spasić family quite literally kept alive:

“Most of the Tamjanika vines in Župa and across Serbia originate from my grandfather’s vineyard, which covered about 0.2 hectares—one of the few that was not destroyed after the Second World War. There were some scattered Tamjanika vines in other vineyards, maybe 10–15 plants here and there, but this was the only vineyard planted entirely with that single variety. And it was old—no one remembers exactly how old. I was born in 1973, and even then they claimed it was over 100 years old, which means it dates back to before the phylloxera outbreak. Unfortunately, it was uprooted in the 1980s, and new plantings were established from its cuttings. Ever since, propagation material has been taken from there, which is why we can say that Tamjanika began spreading from that source,” says Milan.