Tag Archives: Balkans

Balkan Merlot Wine Review: VukojE, Galerija, Bosnia-Herzegovina 2016

Posted on April 29, 2019 by waywardwine

Wow. Hi internet, I missed you. Toddler distractions notwithstanding, let us turn our sails back toward the wine dark sea. Many leagues ago, I started to review Balkan wines my mother-in-law smuggled back with her. The tannic, native grape, Vranak made for some puckered and challenged palates (read here). But, how does Bosnia-Herzegovina handle the stereotyped grape of plush pleasure and ease: Merlot? Continue reading →

Posted in Bosnia-Herzegovina, merlot | Tagged Balkans, Bosnia-Herzegovina, merlot, travel, wine | Leave a comment

Don’t Balk at Balkan Wine: Montenegro Wine Review Plantaze’s Vranac Pro Corde 2013

Posted on January 7, 2019 by waywardwine

Be good to your mother-in-law. You never know when she might share wines smuggled from the Balkans. After our New Year’s Eve Serbian bubbly (read here), today we try a serious red wine from Montenegro: a country sandwiched between the Adriatic Coast, inland Serbia, Bosnia and Croatia to its North, Albania and Kosovo to its South.

This wine’s producer, Plantaze, today makes 40 different wines, from 26 grape varieties, and four brandies totaling 17 million bottles. They are Montenegro’s biggest deal, wine-wise, but started humbly with a 1963 agricultural merger that planted an “infertile wasteland” (their words) of rocks and shallow soil around Skadar Lake: Continue reading →