The vineyard is planted
After assembling land around Erdevik, Don and Seka plant the new vineyard on the slopes of Fruška Gora.
Our story
Don, Seka and a vineyard on Fruška Gora.
McCulloch Wines began with a love of wine, Seka Nikolić’s connection to Serbia and Don McCulloch’s decision to devote the next chapter of his life to growing grapes.
The beginning
Why Erdevik?
For Don and Seka, the answer began with Serbia itself.
Seka was born in Novi Sad and had remained closely connected to the country throughout her years in London. Don had spent thirty years in the Metropolitan Police, but wine had long been the other serious interest in his life. As retirement approached, what had been an enthusiasm became a plan.
Fruška Gora already had centuries of wine history. On his first visits to Erdevik, Don was struck by the village, the landscape and the evidence of a deeply rooted winemaking culture. The couple began assembling vineyard land there, eventually negotiating with around forty separate owners to create a single workable site.
The new vineyard was planted in 2009. The first harvest came two years later.
Don on choosing Serbia
“For me it was an easy choice because my wife was born in Novi Sad.”
That personal connection was reinforced by Fruška Gora’s long wine tradition and by the character Don saw in the land around Erdevik.
Learning the work
From an idea to a first vintage.
Don did not arrive in Serbia pretending to know everything about making wine.
Before McCulloch Wines produced its first vintage, he spent time learning from winemakers in Marlborough, New Zealand, gaining practical experience in the cellar and vineyard. Back in Erdevik, Don and Seka built the estate around a simple principle: the quality of the wine begins with the health of the vineyard.
The 2011 harvest produced the first McCulloch wines. Coupage 2011 later won Bronze at the Decanter World Wine Awards, early evidence that a young vineyard on Fruška Gora could already produce wine with international credibility.
The story so far
Four dates that matter.
The first harvest
The first McCulloch vintage is made, including the Coupage that later earns a Decanter World Wine Awards Bronze.
The winery opens in Erdevik
After producing the early vintages in other wineries, McCulloch Wines moves into its own purpose-built winery.
A small organic estate
McCulloch Wines remains independently owned, producing a limited range of organic wines from Fruška Gora.
The vineyard
The work starts with the soil.
Organic and biodynamic practice shape how the vineyard is farmed, not how the wines are advertised.
No artificial fertilisers, herbicides, pesticides or insecticides are used in the vineyard. Biodynamic principles encourage Don and the team to treat the vineyard as an ecological whole — soil, vines, weather, insects and seasons influencing one another rather than being managed in isolation.
That approach is deliberately low-intervention. The aim is not to make every vintage taste the same, but to give healthy fruit the best chance to express where it was grown.
McCulloch Wines today
Made and tasted in Erdevik.
The winery is now the working centre of the estate: production, ageing, tasting and hospitality under one roof.
McCulloch Wines produces around 15,000 bottles in a typical year. The scale keeps the relationship between vineyard and cellar close, and allows each vintage to be handled with attention rather than pushed toward volume.
Visitors can taste the wines at the winery on Svetog Save in Erdevik and see the landscape that shaped them.
The wines
See what the vineyard produces.
Explore the current McCulloch Wines collection from Fruška Gora.