Gornja Vrućica, Pelješac: a village walk in the rain

On 12 October 2026 we walked through the village of Gornja Vrućica. It was raining, the paved lanes glistened with water, and low clouds hung over the wet tiled roofs, hiding the tops of the wooded hills. The village is built of stone, and we saw houses in every state of repair. Some old houses have been nicely restored; others are still being worked on. An old two-storey house with a sagging roof and a fig tree by its wall is still waiting for repair, and next to it stands a newer stone house. On the way we also saw one brand-new house. Above a wall overgrown with creepers stand old houses with tiled roofs, and elsewhere we looked across wet roofs to a wooded slope and mountains in the clouds.

In one of the lanes a white banner reading Wine Shop “Maste” hangs on a stone gable. It hangs at the cellar the Maste wines come from. We buy two local wines, Maste and Viter. On earlier visits to Pelješac we saw the grapes for Viter drying in wooden crates right in the vineyard; we believe the grape is Plavac Mali. This time we did not see the crates; we only walked through the village.

According to the Municipality of Trpanj, Gornja Vrućica is one of the municipality’s four settlements. The background documents for the spatial plan describe the village as occupying a mountain ridge and a small valley between chains of karst hills south of the small town of Trpanj. The Trpanj tourist board writes of Gornja and Donja Vrućica as two settlements with many hamlets in basins and on slopes in the interior of Pelješac, where vineyards, olive groves, Mediterranean vegetation and karst intertwine.

According to the planning documents, the church of St George (sv. Juraj) stands in front of the village on the eastern knoll of the ridge and has been mentioned as a confraternity church since the 16th century. The church of Our Lady of Mercy (Gospa od Milosrđa), on the pass west of the village by the road to Donja Vrućica, was built in the 17th century.

For us, Gornja Vrućica tastes of wine. On the same day, on our way from Žuljana, we photographed olives before the harvest.