05.5.2007

Why I like un-cool Bulgaria

Our eastern Europe correspondent makes friends with the man who runs Bulgaria's main winery
Not many people go on holiday to Bourgas. It is an industrial town with an oil refinery, a rickety pier and a few hotels that have a whiff of communism about them. Yet there are pleasant streets full of restaurants and cafés. Unlike the nearby resort of Sunny Beach, which attracts hordes of Brits, it’s mainly locals here.

I make friends with the man who runs the main winery. Panayot Nikolov is a dynamic twentysomething wearing a flashy pinstripe suit with a pink shirt. He looks a bit like Alexei Sayle. He’s from the Festa Wine Company, which produces Black Sea Gold wines.
“We will show you the cellar and the winery!” exclaims Panayot, leading me to a black Mercedes with tinted windows. We get in the back and the driver races away, overtaking everything in sight.

Panayot fills me in about Bulgarian wine. “Extreme price-quality ratio. This, I tell you, is the key,” he begins. Bulgarian wine, he explains, was first exported in the 1970s. Doesn’t “extreme price-quality ratio” mean “cheap”, I ask. Panayot gives me a look. “It is not cheap, it just has an extreme price-quality ratio.”
Most exports of Black Sea Gold to the UK are to Northern Ireland. “They like our wine there, oh yes! But England is difficult to crack.” I’m shown around the winery. The casks are made from oak. “These barrels take 7,000 litres. They are very huge,” says Panayot.
We go for a wine tasting. Panayot starts to wax lyrical about the various wines. The sauvignon blanc is “pale straw colour with the aroma of freshly cut grass and ripe fig: this is what I feel”. The chardonnay has “a vanilla nuance from the oak with an apple fruitiness”. It is like “a sultry summer afternoon”. I laugh a bit as I write this down. “My dictionary surprises you?” asks Panayot.
We try a dry red: “This I call the tannic attack!” It certainly has a kick. We try another red: “It is strong. It is concentrated. Yet it hasn’t lost its vigour.”
Panayot gets philosophical. We’ve definitely had a bit now: “Wine is like a man. If you let a man have everything without trial and effort, he gets lazy and achieves nothing in life.”
We try something called Rakia Burgas 63. Rakia is the Bulgarian firewater – and this is the “gold standard... the ultimate rakia experience!”
It’s like grappa, with a kick that just makes me think: “Very bad hangover.” We go to see “bottling facility number 10”. We try some brandy. “Concentrated sunshine!” exclaims Panayot. “You are going to be perfumed for the whole evening, be sure of that!”
I’m not entirely sure what he means. I just nod and raise my glass. We talk some more about “extreme price-quality ratio...” and I decide: Bulgarian wine’s not that bad after all.

Details: Wizz Air (www.wizzair.com) has returns from £89. Hotel Bulgaria (www.bulgaria-hotel.com) has B&B rooms from £65. Bourgas Chamber of Commerce (www.port-burgas.com).

Tom Chesshyre
http://travel.timesonline.co.uk/