Bulgaria
A Thracian wine country that was once a major exporter, rebuilding around its own red grapes.
In the 1980s Bulgaria was one of the largest wine exporters in the world, on the strength of inexpensive cabernet sauvignon and merlot sold into Britain and the Soviet Union. The industry was state-run, planting was large-scale, and the collapse of both the Soviet market and the state farms after 1989 took most of it away. Land restitution split the vineyards into very small parcels, and recovery took two decades.
The native grapes are the current direction. Mavrud, from the Thracian Valley, is dark, tannic and slow to open. Rubin is a 1944 crossing of nebbiolo and syrah made at the Pleven research institute. Melnik, from the far south west, is grown around one town and gives a lighter, spiced red. Dimyat and misket are the traditional whites.
Climate is favourable and land is cheap, so international varieties remain widely planted and Bulgarian cabernet and merlot still offer real value. The reason to pay attention is mavrud.
What the label says
- PDOProtected Designation of Origin
- Two broad regions, Thracian Lowlands and Danubian Plain, with about 50 defined sub-appellations.
- PGIProtected Geographical Indication
- The wider tier.
Signature grapes
our choiceKey regions
- Thracian Valley
- Danubian Plain
- Struma Valley
- Black Sea Coast
- Rose Valley
A dashed outline is a region we describe but do not yet hold a page for.
Grapes that originate here
4 of 6Protected wine names
54 in the EU registerWorth knowing
- Bulgaria was a top-five wine exporter in the 1980s.
- Mavrud is the country's serious native red.
- Rubin is a Bulgarian crossing of nebbiolo and syrah.
More in Europe
Sources
The description, the reading of the classification system and the choice of signature grapes are ours. Region and grape records are built from Wikidata (CC0) and Wikipedia infoboxes (CC BY-SA 4.0). American AVA boundaries come from the TTB (public domain).
- Protected names: European Commission, eAmbrosia.