North Macedonian Wine with Orce Dimitrievski, from Bruśani Winery

Hello, hello, hello! Welcome back to Exotic Wine Travel. I'm your host, Matthew Horky. So, Shireen and I actually are at the small winery called Brusani Winery, and I'm with Orce. I have a hard time pronouncing some of the Macedonian pronunciation, but just a quick introduction to our time here in Macedonia. You know, Macedonia, the wineries are big. When they talk about small wineries, they're talking about, oh yeah, we produce 100,000 bottles a year. We're a small winery. That's not small, I don't think, by my definition. Brusani is truly a small boutique winery. It has a lot of heart and soul. And Orce, if I pronounce it, I'm trying to pronounce it as good as possible. He spent some time, we've been tasting a lot of wines from his barrel samples. All his wines have been excellent. He was actually the first red wine that we had here in Macedonia, because we went out to a restaurant and we bought a bottle of his wine, and then we wanted to meet him. So, we're at the end of our Macedonian trip, and here I am. So, thank you for being on the show. I really appreciate it. Thank you. You're welcome. Can you tell me about the history behind your winery, the story? I found it fascinating. Well, it goes back like three generations, because first of all, the first Tanushina, it's an indigenous variety for people that don't know. It's planted in 1938 by my granddad, and since then started this journey. It's actually tied up because in the family, there were no commercial sites, nothing else. Me, as a third generation, I decided a few years ago that it should be shown to the outside, to the people, the marketing, to the world, because I felt that there's a huge potential. I grew up with the wine, I grew up with the vineyards, although I'm something else in my profession, and I'm an engineer, but my vocation is a winemaker, and I've been doing it since I know about myself, more than I know about my programming. Then somehow, with my dad, somehow we decided, actually I decided that it's about time to start doing it. We started with Branac in 2010, and it was unfiltered. It had a good reaction. Actually, they had perfect reactions. I was amazed by people, how they enjoyed it. Somehow, very soon, we started with Tanushina, which is... Both of them are kind of indigenous, but Tanushina is really indigenous variety, and you cannot find it anywhere outside Macedonia, although we are a very small country. While Branac is more kind of a regional variety, and you can find it elsewhere, like Serbia, like Croatia. Now we are in a process of maybe trying to go bigger, but with small steps. How many bottles do you produce a year? It all depends. Because when we put wine in the barrel, you ask me how many months or years you keep it in. I'm always telling you as much as it wants. We are not the commercial kind of a winery, so we are allowing the wine to grow, and to tell the story, and to give us the notes when it should be bottled. Sometimes, we don't bottle at all. Sometimes, we bottle a few thousand liters per year. It all depends on the year, on the yield. The terroir itself, I told you, in 2014, we didn't even do the harvesting, and we decided, okay, then don't bother. We are aiming at a high quality, and although we are very small, we are trying to get as much as possible. I'm really impressed with your philosophy and everything. Let's talk about some of your wines. Stanusina, this is a Stanusina from 2013. This is an indigenous variety. Don't worry, I'll put it up on the video. There are not very many wineries in Macedonia making this ancient indigenous grape. Can you talk about this? Well, it's really ancient, because I don't know how much people know about the history, but here has been for five centuries were Ottomans, and while they were here, people were not allowed to produce wine. This Stanusina is indigenous, and it's been for a while here. While means for lots of centuries. Somehow, in the monasteries, it survived. This year, in 1938, my granddad decided to plant this vineyard. Why? Because it's an uphill, like 405 kilometers. All the way, all around, it's round, but hills. No, nothing flat. Frost might come up in the winter times, and this variety is quite resistant to the frost. People might be resistant for centuries trying to do some wines for themselves. A few years ago, we decided, because not many people even know about Stanusina. I'm amazed why people don't know, because almost everybody knows about Ranes, which is more or less a regional variety, but Stanusina is indigenous. In this region, where I come from, where my parents came from, they know, yes, but all around Macedonia, the country, more or less. I decided that it's about time to show up that this is a really good potential type of wine, and it's a type of wine that, as I say, it's a Macedonian Pinot Noir. It's light, but it stays in the mouth. It's quite full-bodied, but it's elegant. It goes well. It's nicely smooth. I think it has a huge potential. We are trying. We tried for 2013, since 2013, and I think in the future, we might bring some more, and even better quality. Even this, I think, is quite good. I still think so, too. I think for you out there, they're familiar with exotic wines. For me, it's kind of a cross between Pinot Noir, Norello, Muscalese, and Sicily, and Aetna. It really has a lot of potential, I think. We're going to talk about his variants here. I talked about previous videos. Macedonia has, I think, 90% of the world's variants is here in Macedonia. This is his Brusani variants, Barik, from 2011. He also has in barrels now some reserve wines, but tasting this wine and some of your other variants, I really get a sense of what variants is, like the pure taste of variants. Can you talk about the way that you make variants and maybe about your wine a little bit? Usually, variants is a fruit forward, full-bodied, jammy, with a statement wine. My intention was to have a wine that's well-balanced, elegant enough, and is drinkable enough. At the same time, to have complexity. That's why I'm always thinking that variants should be aged with the barrel, just to gain this complexity. As we said, the gaps should be fulfilled by the barrel, not to be overworked, to taste the fruitiness in the wine, but at the same time to have all the robust to be tamed. Variants, at the same time, it's the name of the horse variety. We always say you need to tame the variants. When you say tame the variants, then immediately they say, oh, this is the fruit. I need to work about it, around it. But when I say tamed, I need to tame it in the winery, so the people that will drink this wine will feel the elegancy and will know that it will give you time to think about it and drink it. It will not fight forward, it will not strike you in the face, but it will just give you space to enjoy it. Our interviews usually, our videos are quite short, but I wanted to ask you a real important question because Macedonian wineries we talked about are usually on a bigger scale, but your family's been making wine forever. You were making wine with your father, your grandfather when you were young. Can you talk about the importance of tradition and what winemaking actually means to you? Unfortunately, in Macedonia, although there's like really many families making homemade wine, but not many of them have decided or been brave enough to go in the market because the market, unfortunately, here in Macedonia is more kind of an industrial type of wine forward. I think that in my family, it was so easy to decide to get with the Vranac and move to the market because my education, although was quite different from this, I took time in persuading myself and learning myself that this variety can be produced in such a small scale and still to have the quality even better than those industrial varieties. Boutique varieties, I think they can offer much more than industrial because the risk is lower. The industrial type of varieties, they give you, you know, they need to go move forward because they're commercialized because of the advertising, because of a huge money overturn. On the smaller scale, when you go, you can give yourself space and to allow yourself to bring the best of the variety and to bring the potential of the terroir or the place where the vineyards are. And at the end, when you drink Vranac from Brusani winery, you drink something that has been produced in the vineyard mostly. And this is our intentions because 2010, from 2011, as you know, from 2012, 2013, there are different wines, you know, but they say they always have the same kind of a trademark, you know, they always have, it's kind of the same sense, but they're different wines, you know, at the end. And that's why maybe it's even more interesting for the consumers to try always what's next, you know, what's new, you know, it's not boring to try new wines and expectations can always hide. But do you feel like you're more connected to your traditions, your family, since you're carrying on the winemaking? It brings emotions that have been here, but you haven't been, but they've been inside, not outside, you know, and with this and with the support from my family, you know, you feel that it's playing around, it's giving you, you know, the wine is giving you support, first of all, you know, it's always, it hasn't been, it's always been bringing me something that I haven't been aware of, you know, and it's really nice to know that it's something you always knew in next year, you know, and you're always looking for the harvest and you're always looking for what's going to happen, you know, although you might be most of the time afraid of what will happen, but it will bring you for sure enjoyment, you know, because at the end, when you sit down, when you have a glass of wine, you know, it doesn't matter how much money it will bring, it matters what's inside, you know, inside here, you know, so this is all what's behind about this winemaking and about the, at the end, boutique wineries, family wineries, you know, it's not about the market, it's about the tradition, it's about what somebody in the past, you know, brought to you or delivered to you, you know, to continue with the mission that's been for a while. Well, thank you so much, it's, and it's also, I want to note that this has been a special afternoon because we actually brought a bottle of Shireen's favorite wine from Serbia here and she was hoarding it, it was her last bottle and we decided to share it because that's what traveling and that's what wine's all about, sharing things with people, giving new experiences and just sharing the joy, so thank you so much and I appreciate and I love your philosophy about boutique wineries, we feel the same way, so thank you so much. If you come to Macedonia, Bouchani wines are not, they're not big-time production, so they're going to only be available here, but you go to a lot of the restaurants in Skopje, if you see a Bouchani wine on that list, make sure to order it, seriously, trust me. Subscribe to our YouTube channel, Exotic Wine Travel, and I'll see you at the next episode.