It’s been a frustrating Bulgarian vintage for Melbourne-based flying winemaker David Wollan. True, 1997 has been cooler than 1996 and winter has arrived early in some regions, but that’s only part of the problem. Irrespective of weather forecasts and target levels of ripeness and flavour, fruit still tends to be harvested the moment it passes minimal levels, for everyone is aware how short the Bulgarian season can be. ‘There’s also immense competition between the big wineries to get as much fruit as they can,’ reports Wollan. ‘The fruit is what keeps the winery going, since many of these guys need to keep very large staffs employed. At one winery which at around 40,000 tonnes crushes about the same as Buronga, there are around 900 people employed. The large organisations left over from the communist era feel obliged to keep people on the payroll, even if they have become privatised. They simply don’t have same imperatives of an Australian winery to reduce staff to a minimum.’ ‘It would be politically disastrous for local politicians and for winery directors to put off people, since these organisations are the major source of employment for all these workers. There are possibly ten times as many people working in a winery that size as you would find in a comparable Australian winery, but they’re probably being paid about one tenth of what an Australian cellar hand would receive.’ Before the collapse of communism, all Bulgarian wineries were part of a massive state-owned organisation controlled by a government department in Sofia. After the monopoly was broken down, each winery became an independent producer under direction of local management, although most wineries remain state-owned. A few wineries have been successfully privatised, but it difficult for the government to meet its aim that the wineries remain in local control. Wollan believes that if they were put onto the free market, international interests would snaffle them. Once the fruit is in the winery, Wollan finds the main challenge is to ensure the advice he gives them is actually carried out. ‘At one winery in 1996 we introduced some new procedures and made some really good wines, something that given the positive response we hoped we could repeat in 1997 on a bigger scale. Unfortunately, for reasons still unclear, it didn’t happen.’ Entrenched habits, staff turnover issues and a fear of a break in the weather meant that much of the fruit allocated to hang for longer on the vines prior to harvest was brought in at the usual time, typically under-ripe. One of the wineries in northern Bulgaria reported back to Wollan that 30 ha of their vineyard had indeed been left out to ripen longer, but that the only problem they faced was trying to do it under six inches of snow! Although the season didn’t begin well, it did improve after a fairly cool, wet beginning. Wollan has seen some good medium weight chardonnays to the north of country, but lighter reds than usual, with the indigenous mavrud and rubin doing well as medium bodied styles. South-eastern merlot looks promising again. Wollan encourages the local winemakers to employ techniques like extended maceration and barrel fermentation to impart more extract to Bulgaria’s red wines and to build their tannins. ‘The point is that the fruit is relatively elegant and light-bodied, especially when it doesn’t achieve full ripeness. It’s so different to Australia, where we take ripeness for granted. In Bulgaria we can’t get the levels of sugar, colour, tannin and flavours that we assume in Australia. The European mindset is so used to under-ripened, light-bodied wines that if you give a winemaker a full-flavoured Australian wine, you might as well be showing them something from Mars.’ ‘You know what you could achieve if given the chance. While we can’t have full control over fruit quality, we have to do our best in the winery, changing their thinking to use more extractive methods.’ David Wollan expects the problems will ultimately be fixed in the vineyard and is pleased to hear winery managers thinking in these terms. He’s even had to take over copies of the viticultural text Sunlight into Wine by Richard Smart and Mike Robinson, so at least he feels there’s hope. Next issue: The Bulgarian vintage round-up.
