Balkan Peninsula Wine Production

Think of the great wine producers of the world and the countries of the western Balkans are unlikely to spring to mind. But that may soon change. The viticulturists of Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, and Macedonia are working hard and investing heavily to find new markets beyond the comfort zone of the former Yugoslavia. Rich businessmen and ex-politicians seeking opportunities have fronted cash throughout the region. But beyond this common story, there is huge variation.

Standing on the steep slopes of the Saints Hills vineyard on the Peljesac peninsula in Croatia, Dubravka Serkovic, a local producer, says wine has been made here “forever”. It certainly goes back to the ancient Greeks. These slopes produce Dingac, a wine distinguished, says Sasa Spiranec, a local wine writer, by the fact that the vineyards run sharply down to the sea, meaning all cultivation has to be done by hand.

Croatia has some 2,500 winemakers producing for the market (many thousands more produce their own). But a few big companies account for half of the market. Tourists quaff large amounts of the stuff but these days they are drinking cheaper, if not less. Sales of Croatia’s many expensive wines have fallen by 40% in the past two years, leading producers to look abroad. Until recently only 5% of Croatian wine was exported, and half of that went to the rest of the former Yugoslavia.

Just south of Peljesac, in Montenegro, the story could hardly be more different. There is a single dominant force here: Plantaze, the biggest producer of bottled wine in the former Yugoslavia. Like its rivals, Plantaze has been hit hard by the recession, but in 2010 it still sold 16.9m bottles.

But less than half of that is drunk at home. One-third of Plantaze’s production goes to Serbia, 15% to Bosnia, 5% to Russia and 5% to western Europe. Still, says Plantaze’s director, Verica Maras, pressure from Italian and French producers exporting to the former Yugoslavia means the company can no longer rely on regional trade. Moreover, as local winemakers are too small to produce the large amounts of big western supermarket chains demand, the emphasis has to be on quality.

Located at the same geographic latitude as the major French winemaking regions, Serbia is a country of the great wine-producing potential. Back in the 19th century, it was a significant wine producer in Europe. The phylloxera, world wars and the years under the Communist regime have devastated the vineyards. It is only in the last 10 years that the wine industry is gaining positive momentum with small wineries taking the lead. The quantity of these wines is fairly low, but the quality is getting better every year with some exceptional wines getting into the market and winning international awards.

The most planted wine grape here is Smederevka, a local variety known for producing large quantities of unremarkable white wine. To increase the potential interest of the final wine, Smederevka is often blended with Laski Riesling (Welschriesling). Regular Riesling (Rhine Riesling) and Sauvignon Blanc are among the more interesting white wines produced in Serbia, while the reds are based on the native Prokupac, grown alongside increasing quantities of French ‘international’ varieties such as Pinot Noir, Gamay, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Merlot. In the Prokupac heartland, to the south of the Serbian capital, Belgrade, the variety is thought by some to be Syrah by another name. A DNA analysis has yet to confirm this, but there are unquestionable organoleptic similarities between Prokupac wine and Syrah wine.

Tikves plays a similarly dominant role in Macedonia, producing two-thirds of the country’s wine. But again the story is different. In the Yugoslav days, 80% of Macedonia’s grapes were exported in bulk and ended up bottled elsewhere in Yugoslavia, or abroad. Now almost all Macedonian wine is branded and bottled at home. Of that, 45% is consumed domestically and the same amount exported to Serbia.

But Macedonia also faces a unique problem. For almost 20 years it has been involved in a tedious dispute with Greece, which thinks that its name implies a territorial claim to Greek Macedonia. In 1989 Greece registered the term “Macedonia” so that only wines from the Greek region could bear that stamp. In recent years, says Katerina Kostovska, Tikves’s export manager, Greece has acted aggressively to protect that claim. Awkwardly, the best-known wine from (the former Yugoslav) Macedonia is “T’ga za Jug”, which translates as “longing for the south”.