Question mark Cabernet Sauvignon & Merlot 2007

I shall close this month with probably the best wine of all. Maybe it's the cold weather this month, or it's St'Valentine but the total wine posts this month count to 19! I will probably hold this record for a long time!

Question mark is the most famous wine by the Katarzyna estate. It has a deep, dark red colour and unique, rich and plentiful taste of peppers, tobacco and black chocolate. The finishing is long lasting and harmonious. The wine is a wonderful mixture of Cabernet Sauvignon & Merlot, vintage 2007 from the famous Thracian region in Bulgaria. It is a bit expensive, but totally worth it (about 20 Euro in shops).

Question mark is the first wine by Katarzyna Estate. It started with the question how to launch it successfully and it turned so successful that the name stayed the same. I like the idea. A great wine and a great finishing for my wine script this wonderful February.

Katarzyna Estate Halla Merlot 2008

Katarzyna is one of my favourite Bulgarian cellars and thank God it has endless list of wines, varieties and vintages to taste. Halla is one of the higher ranked ones, a bit more expensive than Mezzek, Contemplations and Junior.

The wine has a deep taste and is a very good combination of dried fruits and, vanilla aromas and oak. The finishing is long and memorable. A good value for money and wonderful for the evening dinner or friendly lunch with red meets and soft cheese. I personally drunk it on the glass with a friend of mine, while studying for exams. Nevertheless, it was still good.

Todoroff Boutique Merlot 2008

Excellent wine. The look of the bottle, the refined taste and the great aroma send this one on the top places of my wine script. I loved the purple bottle neck and the art label. Actually, as I already wrote about Todoroff winery, it is one of the bulgarian cellars that combine wine & art very successfully.

Todoroff Boutique is a selection of young wines aged for four to twelve months. Young and fresh taste, very well balanced with a notable fruity aroma and dark ruby, even purple colour. The wine is intended to be served straight away. A dry red Merlot, vintage 2008, which we had for lunch with my colleagues from university.

+359 Cabernet & Syrah 2007

Well, I can say that the label of this bottle of Villa Lubimetz winery is more important to mention than the wine itself. I read about the label's latest design in a magazine some time before and I anticipated to taste it. I liked it, but it was a bit soar and not memorable. The aroma is bit strong and tastes of spirit.

Enough about the wine, let's say something about the label. As I already said, its more famous than the wine itself. The idea is to have a strong national appeal: +359 is the telephone code of Bulgaria and the font is the one used by the first Bulgarian Post in 1960s. However, it seems to me that the bright yellow covering on the bottle neck totally ruins the idea. More information about the label you can find on the world's number 1 package design website.

Uniqato Melnik 2008

This typical Bulgarian wine from the Damianitza winery is coming from the Melnik region (Early Melnik variety). Melnik is the most famous winery region in Bulgaria. It's a small, cute town among the mountains, where almost every house's basement is a winery and a guesthouse for wine tourists. Basically, in Melnik wine and wine tourism are the core sources of income for the local people. Many people go there and spend the evening tasting local wines in a typical Bulgarian "mehana". Then, when leaving, everybody buys one of those plastic bottles of home-made wine, which is simply amazing - a young, pure and very dry home-made wine from Melnik is priceless for everyone who've tasted it.

Besides my expectations to taste something similar to home-made Melnik wine and the exaggerated popularity of Uniqato Melnik, the wine was a disappointment for me. A bit tasteless and very edgy, it doesn't really comply with my image of Melnik wines. The label and the bottle itself were nothing special. I think it would have been nice to write something more about the town of Melnik or at least writing why it is so unique (uniqato?).

Zinfandel Redwood California 2007

This is the first American wine I picked from our local Bulgarian supermarket on quite reasonable price (about 7 Euro). Its amazing how the world is becoming so small. Only about 10 years ago it was impossible to find American, Chilean or Argentinian wine in a Bulgarian supermarket.

Second new for me is the variety - Zinfandel, which is very well known and popular in the US, as I have been told. This Californian Zinfandel is grown in Redwood Valley, California and is very close as taste to the Italian variety Primitivo. Actually, only just recently it was recognized as a separate variety (Source) . It is full and rich in flavour and I can feel a spicy note. Very well balanced and fine. I really loved it. We had it with some cheese and vegetable and it went very well. Will definitely taste another Zinfandel soon as well as some more American wines. I am curious what else can be grown in sunny California.

No Man's Land Merlot & Cabernet Sauvignon 2007

This wine from the famous Damianitza region is very reasonable price and therefore very popular in Bulgarians restaurants. However, I haven't tasted it before and after trying it last weekend, it seems I haven't missed much. The wine was a little disappointment, but fortunately it didn't spoil the great evening we had.

The taste of the wine is very intense and a little heavy I have to say. Maybe the wine will go well with a red meat, but for me, as a vegetarian, it is a little too heavy. Neverthless, I liked the fruitiness taste in it.

As almost any popular Bulgarian wine, the label has a story behind it. No man's land does sound memorable and somehow mysterious. The story behind it is that No Man's Land is a 5 mile land in Southwest Bulgarian border that used to separate the worlds of Socialism and Capitalism. During the Cold war, it used to be a scary place for those who tried to escape abroad. Although the story sounds sleazy, knowing the situation inside out, during Socialism people in Bulgaria were living better than in the recent years during Capitalism. Not so many tried to escape back then and the scary stories about the horrific Socialism are a bit exaggerated.