The Liquid Muse

Wines of the World Wednesday

Remember that you read it here when you see the wines of South Eastern Europe take off in the next couple of years. Croatia is already being hailed as a wine-making region poised to provide competition to other popular wine producing countries.

While in this area, I've tried to strike a balance between sampling specialty alcohols and maintaining enough sobriety to write about them, afterward! (And, I've borrowed a camera!)

Cranga is dry, fruity white wine, from Bosnia / Herzegovina. We enjoyed this bottle at Park Princeva, dining outdoors, at a hill-top restauant with a pictoresque view, overlooking Sarajevo. I wish I had the camera there... The tops of hundreds of mosques and churches are squeezed in between centuries old buildings. As the sun set, lights dotted the landscape, and 'the call to prayer' started as a far off rumble and spread, vibrating throughout the city.

The next night, at the restaurant in our hotel (Hotel Gaj - highly recommended!) we tried a red wine from Serbia / Montenegro, a neighboring country, also formerly regions of Yugoslavia. It was so tasty, we had a second bottle, followed by two half-bottles, among three of us. Needless to say, we teetered off in high spirits! This light red, peppered with fruit and spice, was a great with food and nice to sip while chatting. Obviously, it went down far too easily!