Mavrud

Mavrud is Bulgaria's most distinctive native red grape and it is grown almost nowhere else. The name comes from the Greek word for black. It is concentrated in the Thracian valley around Plovdiv, in the warm south of the country, and DNA work has linked it to a small group of local Balkan varieties with no international relatives.

It is difficult enough that it nearly disappeared. It buds late and ripens very late, often in the second half of October, so it needs a long warm autumn and a sheltered site. It crops lightly and unevenly. Under the state planning of the communist decades those traits made it uncompetitive against cabernet sauvignon and merlot, and plantings shrank to a few hundred hectares.

The wine repays the effort. It is dense and dark, high in tannin and acidity, with blackberry, dried plum, leather and a herbal bitterness, and it needs several years to open. Good examples age for fifteen. Private producers around Plovdiv and Asenovgrad have replanted it since 2000, and it is now the grape Bulgaria leads with abroad.