Master of Wine Jo Ahearne visits the Stobi Winery in Macedonia - new 2014 vintage wines


Posted on Sun 13th Jul 2014 at 10:59




I've just returned from this month's trip to Skopje to visit the team at Stobi Winery. The weather has turned a toasty 35 degrees but they have had their much-needed rain and the vineyards have burst into a sea of verdant green foliage.


The commercial team have been busy on the road visiting their Balkan customers and in the last month there has been an addition to the marketing team - another Jadranka is in our midst. Jadranka Vtoriot (the Second) is never to be confused with Jadranka Prviot (the First) as one is a pint-sized blond dynamo and the other is a cool, dark near-Amazonian who makes me feel about 3 feet tall.

The Signature Wines team and Jadranka Vtoriot got to know each other, plotting the next phase of Stobi in the UK while I moved into the 'board room' to plot the next vintage with the winemaking team. Stobi winemaker Dane Jovanov was in a good mood despite his recent loss in the national elections (maybe it's because of the recent news of the planned arrival of his second child or the prospect of the arrival of lots of little grapes I'm not sure) and his father, Gjoko Jovanov, popped in and out of the proceedings looking as relaxed and tanned as if he'd just spent a month on a golf course in the Algarve. He was at pains to point out that it was a vineyard tan but hey who knows! [nggallery id=41] There's a lot about the winemaking process that is full of lofty, artistic endeavour and flowery thoughts but vintage planning isn't one of them. It's a bit like a bunch of chefs prepping in a kitchen - without all that hard work the food would never get on the table on time.... So there's the inevitable bottlenecks to overcome (times when the peak of the fruit comes in and we have to be careful to use all the modern equipment and technology to it's ultimate capacity to make sure each grape get looked after in the same careful way), new systems to put in place and different winemaking techniques to try to ensure we get the best wine we can from the vintage that the gods give us.

We had an interesting discussion about Rose wines and how popular they have now become all year round in the UK with the upshot being that we are planning a Vranec Rose for this vintage - all vibrant pink and purple colours and juicy blueberry fruit. I can't wait! It's also a time to plan for the future, talking of yields and styles of wine we want and gradually cajoling Nikola the CEO to buy us another pneumatic press to make the white wines even more lovely. I couldn't help but chuckle as in Macedonia pneumatic is pronounced with the 'p' intact which sounds so sweet. I'm taking as much advantage as possible at the occasional lapse in the Stobi team's near-perfect English as I'm at the early stages of my VERY long journey learning Macedonian and I'm sure it will be a huge source of amusement to them all. In truth, I'm currently struggling with the Cyrillic alphabet so I'm a long, long way off.... Well time to go and as they say in Macedonia vidi naskoro - see you soon.

Written by Jo Ahearne; Master of Wine, for Signature Wines Ltd.


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