Jo Ahearne passed the notoriously difficult Master of Wine (MW) qualification in 2008 which makes her one out of around 400 globally and the only MW in Croatia. 

Jo Ahearne MW is a Londoner with a career in wine spanning more than 25 years. Jo first visited Croatia in 2003 upon returning to Europe after more than a decade of making wine in Australia. In 2014 she came back to Croatia, more specifically the island of Hvar, to fulfil an enduring dream: producing her own wine. 

How would you describe your winemaking style?  

Labelling winemaking styles is raft with problems as there’s always someone who disagrees with your definition, but I’d say low intervention. I don’t add anything and let the grapes speak for themselves. Of course, I guide them towards the vision I have of the wines but no enzymes or yeasts and only a small amount of sulphur. I hand plunge for the gentlest extraction and don’t like too much oak as I want to taste the wine. 

What does Hvar mean to you?

It’s one of the most beautiful places and now I’ve been living here for nearly 6 years, I have some wonderful friends and feel at home here. The first two or three years were hard as I knew no one. One of my greatest pleasures is driving with the windows down (my version of air conditioning) and smelling all the aromas of the island. One patch is all lavender, then the next is wild fennel and then the next there’s something sweet that you just can’t put your finger on.

When did your family (or you) start making wine?

I come from the East End of London so winemaking isn’t exactly in the family. I became fascinated by wine and went to work for a wine retailer in London to learn more. After a few years I realised I needed to get something special to make headway in the wine industry so I decided to apply for the Master of Wine programme. But I realised I needed some production experience so I went to Australia to work for a wonderful boutique wine producer, Charles Melton. And I got hooked, sold my house, gave all my money to Charles Sturt university in order to study winemaking and my journey began. That was in 1995 and I’ve never looked back.

If you could only sell one of your wines, which one would it be and why?  

It’s like asking which is your favourite child. If I was pushed it’d be my maceration/orange wine, Wild Skins. It goes well with a huge array of food - from antipasti, seafood, poultry, pork and even lamb. It’s more like a light red than a white with a great refined tannic structure as well as an undercurrent of fruit.

Before venturing into the winemaking industry in Croatia, Jo worked with iconic wineries and retail environments around the globe including the boutique wine producer, Charles Melton, Jacob’s Creek in Australia and Harrods in London.

Eventually the call of independent winemaking became too strong and she took the next step to become a winemaking consultant, working in France, Spain, Italy, Hungary, India and Macedonia. Jo Ahearne passed the notoriously difficult Master of Wine (MW) qualification in 2008 which makes her one out of around 400 globally and the only MW in Croatia. 

Jo always had the desire to produce her own wine somewhere. In 2014 she was invited to the Dalmatian Wine Expo in Split where she first started to appreciate the most widely planted grape variety in Dalmatia, Plavac Mali. Marvelling that one region could produce wines akin to both Amarone and Barolo, Jo was transfixed. 

Ahearne now makes her own wine, Ahearne Vino, on the island of Hvar. For her first vintage, the Tomić family, another Hvar wine winemaker, rented her some space in their garage. Eventually, Jo got her own space and right now Ahearne Vino is located in the gorgeous hill village of Vrisnik, close to her white grape varieties.