Bulgaria’s Rich Wine History Continues To Evolve — Part of the NEW Old World
After spending nearly three weeks riding my motorcycle throughout Bulgaria and exploring its re-emerging wine industry, I sit down one-on-one with Marin Atanasov. Marin is a sommerlier and brand ambassador for the Brand Marketing Organization World Wines.
We meet at a quiet cafe in a leafy neighborhood, far off the main drag, where he Marin guides me through a fast-track “master class” of Bulgarian wine. We snack on cheese and dried meat while tasting the beautiful bottle of Pamid I’ve been carrying for well over a week. A gift from Dimitar at Zagreus Winery who I met last week, I was excited to learn that Marin hadn’t tried the “Hand Made” wines from Zagreus. So very subtly, I felt I could introduce a new wine to one of the most passionate Bulgarian wine ambassadors and sommeliers in the country.
He is a wealth of knowledge and runs me through the history of winemaking in Bulgaria. From the Thracians who discovered winemaking around 3000 BC to the many dark periods of wine, Bulgaria’s wine history is rich. There was a halt of wine production in the late 1300s when the Ottoman’s began its 500-year rule. Then, after its liberation from the Turks in 1879, Bulgaria entered a period of a wine renaissance. Yet even that abruptly halted in 1900 because of the worldwide phylloxera epidemic.
