2006.05.01: May 1, 2006: Headlines: COS - Bulgaria: Agriculture: Vinyards: Sofia Echo: Josh Kroot and Audrey Amara help wine and grapes to market in Bulgaria
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2006.05.01: May 1, 2006: Headlines: COS - Bulgaria: Agriculture: Vinyards: Sofia Echo: Josh Kroot and Audrey Amara help wine and grapes to market in Bulgaria
Josh Kroot and Audrey Amara help wine and grapes to market in Bulgaria
Though possessing only slight information about vine cultivation and winemaking, Audrey and Josh soon recognised there to be a number of ways to work with people in the region. Through the Peace Corps, they were put in contact with Volunteers for Economic Growth Association (VEGA), a group funded by USAID, which helped them to bring a wine expert from California to the region and evaluate the potential to create an organisation that would brand and sell the wine that was being made by small local winemakers.
Josh Kroot and Audrey Amara help wine and grapes to market in Bulgaria
READING ROOM: That the sun may shine
09:00 Mon 01 May 2006
MAGDALENA RAHN travels to Bulgaria’s southeast wine-growing region to learn about the traditions in this area and the wine co-operative that is fighting to preserve them.
Caption: CULTIVATING FUTURE PLANS: Local viticulturalist Kostadin Atanasov, Magdalena Rahn and Peace Corps volunteers Audrey and Josh discuss the future of the Melnik vine co-operative.
[Excerpt]
Friday: first impressions
Even in the twilight they stun the eye: striated tan cliffs, topped with scrub verdancy, a lone pine on pinnacle, twists of pikes like sandstone Matterhorns. We are in a taxi from Sandanski, after a four-hour bus ride from Sofia the first Friday evening in April, on our way to Melnik for the weekend.
One enters upon the panorama unexpectedly, among chapparel hills; the road turns: a sudden hewn valley.
“It’s natural,” says Josh Kroot, a US Peace Corps volunteer from Pazardjik who has invited me to come to see the projects on which he and Audrey Amara, a US Peace Corps volunteer from Kazanluk, have been working since the beginning of 2005.
The two regularly go down to Melnik to speak with various viticulturists and oenologists about problems they as local producers have been facing in bringing wine and grapes to market. Most of the people they met while travelling with another Peace Corps volunteer, Joe Ferguson from Kolarovo. Though possessing only slight information about vine cultivation and winemaking, Audrey and Josh soon recognised there to be a number of ways to work with people in the region. Through the Peace Corps, they were put in contact with Volunteers for Economic Growth Association (VEGA), a group funded by USAID, which helped them to bring a wine expert from California to the region and evaluate the potential to create an organisation that would brand and sell the wine that was being made by small local winemakers.
“We’re almost there,” he says, “and after we drop our stuff off at Hotel Mario, we’ll go to this great place for dinner.”
Upon reaching the town – officially the smallest in Bulgaria with a population of 275 – one immediately remarks its picturesqueness: all the buildings must be built and maintained in the Bulgarian National Revival style. And it’s clean, and fresh, and charming. A canal runs down its one main street, itself lined with guest houses, hotels and mehanas. Still at 8pm, one can make purchases from selections of local wines, honeys and fruit preserves.
We cross a bridge to reach Hotel Mario, where the proprietor enthusiastically greets us and shows us our rooms. He’s warm, animated about his reunion with Audrey and Josh, chattering in Bulgarian about random occurrences, something.
I ask Audrey and Josh about the history of the hotel, and Audrey advises me to ask the man, who the two call Mario, as he’ll probably tell me every detail since its origin. Later, on Sunday morning, I do ask, and find that his name is Petar “Pesho” Dimitrov (Mario is his son), and he’s had the hotel for five years. Before that, he was a architect. Surprisingly, he talks more about how “it’s the people who will make a democracy, not the state. You must do it yourself”, as opposed to the hotel itself.
Our short walk up the main street takes us to Mencheva Kushta, a traditional restaurant, like all in the town. Though it’s not cold outside at all – we’re relishing the first week of true spring weather, and remark how much further advanced the trees are in their blooming here than in Sofia – the hearth inside heartens and warms.
Firstly ordering some of the house wine, we decide to share kyupolu (mashed aubergine salad), tsarska turisha (hashed lacto-fermented vegetables, a traditional saur-type preparation) and a combinirani sach. The two describe sach as a type of meat-and-vegetable dish served sizzling on a hot clay skillet.
“If Rice-a-Roni is the San Francisco treat, then this is the Melnik treat,” said Josh, an SF native.
It comes, and the proprietor instructs us: “Tryabva da oburkvaite” (you’re to stir it around).
For some reason, we were talking about vacuum-cleaners, and he seems amused when I confirm that the correct word in is Bulgarian “prahocmukachka”, or dust-sucker.
To accompany our second round of wine, we decided on desserts, thick house sheep-milk yoghurt topped with green-fig preserves, and homemade icecream, which tasted of honey and walnuts.
Some hours of good conversation later, we are happy enough to head off to bed.
When this story was posted in May 2006, this was on the front page of PCOL:
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Story Source: Sofia Echo
This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Bulgaria; Agriculture; Vinyards
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