The ULTIMATE ALBANIAN FOOD EXPERIENCE!! Smoked Meat & Cheese at Mrizi i Zanave | Lezhë, Albania

Underwine, cheese underwine, and in the winter we may sign the cheese with white pomegranates, but in this moment we don't have it, we finished it. So you are aging the cheese in a barrel with wine? And then we eat it and it blows our minds. Good morning everyone, I hope you're all doing well, this is David Hoffman from David's Vineyard coming at you from beautiful Albania. I'm actually right outside of the town of Leje, in an incredible eco-tourism or eco-resort called Nizi Ezanave. This place, I saw it online and I was like, I gotta go here, this looks like the best thing ever. Look at this, they're drying tomatoes over here, there's a ton of geese over there, they got cows, goats, horses, over there they got more tomatoes, right? More tomatoes. Buongiorno. Tutto posto? Ben arrivato. Grazie, grazie. And this is the owner, Altin. He speaks really good Italian. Okay, so here we're walking into the main building, and this is where you can have breakfast, lunch, and dinner. So breakfast is only for people who stay at the hotel, and then lunch and dinner, anybody can come and have dinner, lunch. Hi, how are you doing? Hey. This is burek? Burek, corn burek. Corn burek. It's inside soft, but the inside is crunchy. This is the best. Spinach, parmigiano. I gotta say, this might be the best burek ever. Corn, bread, burek, or corn dough, right? So it's all corn, and then you have nice cheese. It's almost like grits in there, it's like grainy, you know? This is an oven, my God. The oven, the oven. It's crazy. So he has a lot of different burek. They use basically different herbs and different greens that are grown here on the property. So many. They all look delicious. Let's keep exploring. Okay. I'm still really hungry, though, I need breakfast. So this is like your little forest. You call it the bosque, right? So there's a forest. This is incredible, I've never seen this before. So basically they carved out into the rock or the hill this beautiful terrace of one, two, three, four, five, like six huge tables. Yes. Ten years build it, and the woods survive better in a lot of places. We preserve, we cure the woods. It's so important. Wow. Not to destroy the forest. I love it, man, I love it. This place is a different world. The Albanian breakfast is with rakija. This is the mulberry rakija. You know mulberry fruit? This is the life, guys. Cheers. Gazur. Wow, so smooth. Yeah. Bono, bono. It's fantastic rakija, yeah. You can feel it, you can taste the mulberry. And it's not too strong, super chilled. Yeah. Wow. And what is this? This is corn and cheese. We have here the fruit. It's the wood here in the forest. Okay. It's this fruit, you can see here. This, this fruit. It's full of antioxidants, it's wild fruit. We have here in the forest, it's not natural, it's not planted here. We use it so much for rakija, we use it for juice, for jams. So here we have breakfast. We got burek, we got cheese, this is fried... Yeah, petola, it's Albanian petola. Petola, okay. The moment you don't have bread, you put the fried, just flour. Just flour, okay. So it's basically just flour, fried. Over here we have a plate of figs, grapes, raspberries, blackberries. Let me try some of these figs. Oh, this is delicious. Wow. This is jam. So I'm going to have some of the burek, the same one I had earlier. I love how crispy it's on top. Nice and mushy. This burek is in a whole different world. I mean, nothing like it. Usually you get it with dough, this is with corn. We have a problem with diet in Albania. These eggs are eggs from here, from the farm, right? Oh, I have some cheese, and I have some butter. Obviously they love butter here in Albania. Oh my God. Cheese just melted and oozed out of my mouth. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to get some cheese, like this. It's goat cheese, goat cheese. This is truly farm to table. Right there, everything is made, grown, produced, and we're eating it. Wow. And this is the petula. So he said to add honey. Now it's really bland. Add some honey. Basically this is a fried pancake. Fried pancake. I have to have another one. So far, just fill it up with honey. Close it like that. Oh yeah. From the eggs to the fruit to the honey, everything is produced here on the farm. Again, gazur, gazur, gazur. Gazur to the best ecotourism resort, lodge, farm. This guy does everything here. Now what we're going to do, we're going to get on his bike, we're going to go around the whole property and see what they produce. Ready to go? Hello. The best, the best moto in the world. Used so much farmers here, this moto. Yeah? It's perfect. It's 30 years old and go, same as Mercedes. Oh, si, si. Let's do this. Real agriculture. Yeah, sir. Really, really. Look at this. Going through the farmland. Over here we have some vines. Over here we have some different fruits and vegetables. Our idea is to valorizing everything what we have here. This is one old political prison. We build it, we rebuild it, we rehabilitation this. This is an old prison. Wow, here, out here, like in the middle of nowhere. Yes, yes. That's amazing. We put green pines and the sugar and stay in the sun for so much time, for two months. Touch is so hot. Wow. And the juice of pine. It's like boiling. Yes. For so much days. Pine syrup. And this is how he makes it. That's incredible, dude. Wow. Now we're going to enter the winery section. This is so cool. Dude, it's crazy. How many fermenting tanks you have? It's a normal medium of winery, but a technological winery. We are so open of the future, of the new techniques. More inside the technology in the winery, more is down the quantity of additives inside. So the wine can be more natural with high technology. You see there. We have the system of cold. So you have huge fermenting tanks in the beginning. This is like where they start, right? In this moment, we have two types of white wine and some two types of red wine. Not so much. So this is last year's harvest. Yes. Basically, it was bottled. Now they're storing it, right? Wow. We needed to make free the tankers to put the new wine. And this year, it's more fast than other years. This year, the grape is ready. I think it's maximum 10 days it's ready. You try. This is the Kalmet. This is Kalmet grape. It's Albanian autochthonous variety of grape. And we put it just six months in the tonneau. No barrique. Tonneau is more big. Important is to have a little sense of wood, but not so much. We don't like so much wood. All right, man. Let's try this. Cheers. Oh, the temperature is perfect. Not be so hot. No, it's like cool. Yeah. It's sitting here. Out there, it's hot. In here, it's cold. Yes. I feel good. To stay stock, you need to stay under 20 degrees. For the barriques, for the bottles, it's so important. Delicious. Wow. Fruity. This is indigenous grape. I'm super happy. Thank you. I'm so excited I'm here. This is great. So much wine. Wow. White, red. They have house wine that never ends here. My partner. What? This is smoked? I show you something very special for me. This is the smokery. It's the smokery of the meat. That time, I made experiments of cheeses, of salts and everything what they needed to smoke. This is the smokery. So that's cow sausage? Yes. And we call it kumajag. Kumajag. Yes. And here we have the pork. So this is the smoker room. Right now, he turned it off. He said they finished smoking for the morning. This is already go over here to another room. Stock room. Yes. What? Amazing. We use the meat of little farmers with three porks, four cows. It's a little farmers made a fantastic meat. And we made it in traditional method but we are open of technology and to be safe. So we have beef sausage. Yes. The same thing? This is pork. This is pork sausage. This is beef sausage. This is pork sausage. Okay. Big difference. Yeah. It looks different. Wow. That one is darker, richer. This one has more cloudy, white layers. What is that? The beef pastrami, you see, it's with we use local spices. It's it's juniper. It's red juniper we have here. Probably one of my favorite rooms of all time. Smoked meat sausages. Wow. Pork, beef. The smell is unbelievable. Hey, for lunch, we're having all this, right? Yeah? You gotta try it all. You gotta try all this. Wow. It's called the pasturma. Different from the basturma from Armenia. This is the farmer. This is the wife. These are good workers and we select what we needed. Our juices in the restaurant is just fresh. And every week I buy from this man 500 kilo of fruits. And not just from this man, from other people. So the power of our restaurant is so big. And maybe we use fresh juices and we don't use industrial drinks. This is so fantastic to make local economy. That's the best part about what you guys do is that you guys help locals. They buy from farmers. No industrial stuff. Nothing pre-made. Nothing frozen. Everything fresh. 500 kilos a week? That's crazy. That's amazing. This is the cheese factory. It's like this. Little cheese factory but it's quality. Cheese factory. Yes. What? You have wine. You have cheese. Yes. You have grapes. Yes. I show you another surprise. Okay. So with the cheese in this moment we made a technique. This is the goat cheese. What we feed this morning. This year. No? And here we finish with the goat cheese and we put the combing to be pasteurizing but not in high temperatures. Maximum 62 degrees. And we put down 36 degrees and this white cheese with penicillium. That's crazy. This is so good. This is similar to like brie cheese? Yes. It's something this but it's not with added fat. It's just natural fat of the cheese. It's really natural. Really normal. just the salt and penicillium is better to put inside and we don't use another additives inside. Not everyday come really white you see here come maybe something different but it's really natural. We use for the restaurant. This milk's the best man. I can't even believe where I am. I'll tell you I travel a lot I've never been inside a cheese factory like this. Thank you. Like this is cool. We use tomatoes little entrails serve fresh one welcome plate for the clients in my restaurant. The idea is we serve this with tomato and basil and tomato really fresh sour today in the restaurant so we pick the tomato in the same day. We make the ricotta cheese today and we serve in the table today. To make the maximum fresh in the table. You see there. My cousin come with the blackberries. Wild blackberries. Wild blackberries. They're perfect. They're smaller. So much flavor. Not sour. What is this dude? Crazy. This is the cheese. It's stocked here for 60 days in wood bars. The wood made special sour cheese and made stability with temperatures and it's natural. So that cheese you just showed me is traditional Albanian cheese. On top he has goat cheese. Over here to the very end we have cow cheese different in color. That's white, whiter, that's yellow, super yellow. Different molds, different sizes. He sells all this obviously at the restaurant when you eat, you eat this cheese but you can also buy, come here. So we have different forms and different variety. For example this is the white pomegranate. So you are aging the cheese in a barrel with wine and then we eat it and it blows our mind. So what these guys are doing is they're taking this cheese to the restaurant and to the shop. And every day we take cheese to put in the restaurant and in our shop. And everything goes fantastic. In this moment they don't have quantity of cheese for the clients. You see it's empty. The goat cheese is the first stop here and the second stop in the food bar. They have like 300 goat cheese here, actually more. This goes to the bottom. So lots of goat cheese. This is the first day here. The first day and then it goes over. And it over goes in the food bar. Here it needs to stay the temperature more hot and for the two days and after go in another food bar to stay more long time. What other surprise do you have for me? Here we made the fruits, the juice of corn to drink in the morning. Here is the tomato, The dried tomato. You see the dried tomato in the place to dry. He was telling me the way they do this is they dry the tomatoes then bring it here, put it under oil and here we have sundried tomatoes with oil. I think it's more sweet. My favorite thing of all time. The reason is simple, we don't do so much salt. Tomato, all the flavors, the juices, it's been dried but then you add the oil. One last one, one last one. The sundried tomatoes, the marmalades, everything, everything that has been produced from a fruit or vegetable into a jam. In every season we have something to make. I have four workers here, in this moment stay in the winery to put the bottles but normally stay here. In every season we have something to make for these people. We have tomatoes, we have berries, we have in the spring different fruits, in the summer, in the winter time we have another product to make. In 12 months these labs go every day. I'm the first producer of rice in Albania. This guy changed a jail into a never ending factory, cheese factory, wine factory, marmalade factory, I mean like salami, smoked meats, this is this is unreal and he does it all with the help of the community, all locals, all farmers, everybody who's employed here from the area, everything you eat here, it comes from right here from the farm. It's the best place in the world. Thank you so much. Thank you, thank you, thank you. All right, let's go. Let's rock and roll. Cheese. More cheese. It's one experiment to make a green cheese. So this is an experiment he's doing, he's doing some green cheese in an old tunnel. The smell is so strong and it's normal. This is a tunnel he made in the hillside where they store the cheese and that's green. It's an experiment. Wow. The smell is incredibly strong. Yeah. Incredibly strong. It's super dark down here, it's cold. Yeah. It's crazy. Oh, it's crazy but it's good. It's good. It's unique. Dude, you couldn't have surprised me more. Maybe you go strong, don't start. Okay, you see? Maybe you needed to go slowly. Here, we have a plantation of artichokes. In this moment, it's finished the summer season and in autumn and in winter start the new production, no? So this is where he produces artichoke? Yes. Here we have the vineyard for the grape, white grape, not red. So this is white grape vineyard. Yes. Here's artichoke. What don't you produce? Here we have the beans. Beans? Beans, yes. So normal vegetables all come from the farmers with over 400 families. Yes. 400 families from the area of Leje. Yes, yes. And then you also produce your own which is all this. This is all produced by you. This is the white grapes. Right here, we can try the grapes. One right here. It's probably still sour because it's not harvest yet. Mm-hmm. Harvest is late September or early October. The amount of sun they're getting is crazy. So hot right now. August in Albania is scorching. Definitely worth it but prepare yourself because it gets intensely hot. So we're getting back here to the hotel area. Tomatoes? Oh, man. Ice cream. So this is the shop. And here's Jovalin. Start for the honey. Producer. It's producer honey. All right. So like you said, this shop, everything here they produce. Cheese, marmalade. They have your smoked meats. Over here, they have these beautiful jars. Pottery made for Rakiya. These are made for Rakiya. And this guy, he's just going all out here with the honey. Multi-flower honey. He takes it all off the honeycomb. He adds it in here and then he adds it into this machine. It spins and then all the honey comes out dripping. Dude, where's the wine? Where's the Rakiya? This is the goat cheese? Wow. Dense. Minor salt. Oh my God. The cheese made of wine is to die for. Like, it is It's like a mix between like a gruyere, a brie. Super soft. Also, you feel the wine. Oh, and these, what are these manteles? What's the mantel? Old woman from here and we go to see together how it's made. So basically, she's knitting these different tablecloths, right? They're all tablecloths. This morning, I think I've experienced more than I have in my entire life in that three-hour span. From seeing how they make wine to cheese to smoked meats. Then they're going to seeing the farm. And look at this. This is, dude, this is where people have lunch right here? People come here and have lunch like this? This is crazy. And this is all vines too, no? Yeah. Now, we're going to check into my room. They have nine rooms here. Super small boutique hotel. It's beautiful. Look at this. A stone house. Hear the sounds. Look over an entire area. Beautiful farmland. There's no words to explain how unique this property is. And we only started. As soon as I enter the building, go up the stairs, and this is mine with the horse. Are you serious? Are you serious about this? Oh, my God. Queen-size bed, twin-size bed. Behind us, we have the bathroom separated by glass so you can easily be in the bathroom. Still turn out the view. Look at this. The building, the stone building right here gets cut and then you have glass. Dude, I am so happy to be staying here tonight. This is the best. The best place on the planet. My God. Guys, when you come to Albania, come to Mizi Izanavit, you can see everything I just showed you. If you don't stay here, come here for lunch, dinner, it's okay. Try their wines, their honey, their rakija, all the fruits, all the burek. Yes. Everything. I still have another half day to go. I hope you guys enjoyed this video. If you did, please give me a thumbs up. Leave me a comment below. Subscribe to my channel for more awesome travel content and next time you find yourself in Albania, drive about two hours north from Tirana or Prileje and come here. You will love it. Thank you. Bye.