Even “their women drank,” the Greek philosopher Plato once groused about the wine-drinking Thracians of what is now southern Bulgaria.
And why not?
Taking time off from the angry political clashes of a continent on which factions see every issue as one of existential, fundamental, uncompromising importance, I decided to distance myself and nip off for the calm of Bulgaria’s Thracian mountains.
So no mention this week of the pressing issues of our times. No Brexit or Nexit, no election in Ukraine featuring a television comic and a chocolate king, no diligent and dour Angela Merkel or swashbuckling Emmanuel Macron, no carping about press “narratives,” and absolutely no mention of jihadists.
My sights were set on one of Europe’s oldest cities, the ancient Bulgarian town of Plovdiv, located along the Maritsa River in a plain between two mountain ranges on what was once a major route linking Western Europe to Constantinople and Asia Minor.
Most anyone who was anyone in European history has marched through Plovdiv: Greeks, Celts, Romans, Goths, Byzantines, Huns, Bulgars, Slavs, crusaders, Turks, Persians, and the Rus.
The conquerors have left their traces for archaeologists excavating through 39 feet of cultural layers. This year Plovdiv is sharing with an Italian town the title “European Capital of Culture.” But throughout history it was tagged with other names.
After the town fell to Philip II of Macedon, it was dubbed the “town of villains,” a pejorative reference to the conquering king’s decision to settle it with 2,000 of his rough-hewn foot soldiers. It also attracted the description “adulterer’s town,” no doubt for the carousing, and more, of the newcomers.
Plovdiv boasts an old town of meandering cobbled streets, elegant 19th-century townhouses, and Roman ruins, including an amphitheater. For this traveler, most crucially, it is a perfect location to sample some of the wines of southern Bulgaria.
Long a wine snob, who on the whole eschews anything that isn’t Italian, French, or Spanish, my short trip to Plovdiv taught me to understand why the women of ancient Thrace — Plato be damned — drank.
Bulgaria was the second-largest wine-producing nation in the world until the fall of Communism, and before the Soviet era, Bulgarian wine was known in “the West.” One of Winston Churchill’s favorite wines was Bulgarian, a Melnik, a red from a broad-leaved vine cultivated primarily near the Greek border.
But most Bulgarian wine after the Second World War was exported to the Soviet Union or other Warsaw Pact countries, a circumstance at least somewhat mitigating my ignorance. As Bulgaria struggled to adjust to change in the immediate post-Soviet years, which it is still doing, really, vine cultivation was sadly neglected. Now Bulgarian wines are turning heads and conquering palates.
Among them, wines from the mavrud vineyards, south of Plovdiv. Dark red and matured in oak barrels, they tend to be spicy and fruity with blackberry and mulberry notes. And in one restaurant, a local, disabled wine aficionado I ran into told me a couple of the many versions of the ninth-century fable of the mavrud wine.
During the reign of the Bulgarian Khan Krum the Fearsome, vine cultivation was banned. But a widow secretly kept a grape plant, first feeding the grapes to her son when he was sick and later, when the hidden grapes fermented, wine.
According to one version, the grown-up son won a contest in which competitors had to try to snatch a hair from the khan’s beard. Another version has the young man slaying an escaped lion. Either way, impressed with the youngster’s courage and strength, the khan discovered he’d been fed grapes and wine but announced the widow’s vines should be planted and named after the young man, who was called Mavrud.
Apocryphal, no doubt. The Greek word “mavro” means “black,” and this is probably the origin. But who cares? The ruby red wine is why I came. And I can see why Homer feted Thracian wine in “Iliad.”
“Prepare a feast for your councillors; it is right and reasonable that you should do so; there is abundance of wine in your tents, which the ships of the Achaeans bring from Thrace daily.”
Jamie Dettmer is an international correspondent and broadcaster for VOA.
