Wines of Bosnia & Herzegovina

I sadly had to miss last week's class on whiskey, but on the bright side I got to taste some wonderful wine in Sarajevo. Bosnia and Herzegovina have two predominant varietals: Blatina and Žilavka. Blatina is a red grape, and interestingly is a "functional female flower," meaning that in order to pollinate it must be planted along with other varietals such as Merlot. Žilavka is a white grape planted throughout former Yugoslavia.

So where did I taste the wine? I went to a great restaurant on the hill overlooking Sarajevo called Restaurant Kibe, which had a decently sized wine list of domestic wines. However, when I sat down at the table, I realized that I knew nothing about Bosnian wine. Thankfully, the restaurant had Wifi, and some quick googling turned up the fact that an importer I'm familiar with - Blue Danube -  actually works with one Bosnian producer, Brkić, which thankfully was on the list. This made me wonder why more importers don't cultivate a consumer-facing brand as curators of top foreign producers, particularly since we've seen that importers can ship direct to consumer in the US. Anyways, I ordered the Brkić Plava Grada (a Blatina) and the waiter seemed pleased with the choice of wine, which I thought it was pretty tasty if a little on the sweet side for my preference. That's about the extent of my tasting notes, but it really was good!

Bonus photo of a bunch of wine sitting in a room in Tito's (former ruler of Yugoslavia) multi-billion dollar secret underground bunker: