by Allison Levine, Please the Palate
Wine production in the Balkans, which includes Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia and Turkey, dates back to before the Romans.
Is Bulgaria the next “new” wine region on the horizon?
June 21, 2023In Bulgaria specifically, there is evidence of winemaking since 4000 B.C. And in the 1980s, Bulgaria was the second largest producer of bottled wine after France. Of course, it was more about quantity over quality. And 90% of the production went to the Soviet Union with only a small amount of the best quality wines going to Europe, mostly to the UK.
But when the Soviet Union collapsed, so did the wine industry. Everything went from state-run to privatized, and quality continued to suffer. That was until the year 2000 when things started to shift and money started to come in from the EU. French and Italian winemakers, including Michel Rolland, had already started coming to Bulgaria. And in 2011, Robert Hayk returned to Bulgaria with business partner Tina McKendree with the goal to bring Bulgarian wines to the U.S.
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