The ULTIMATE Albanian Food & Wine EXPERIENCE!! Albania's Biggest & Oldest Winery | Durrës, Albania

Hi guys David Hoffman here from David's Bin here coming at you from beautiful Durres, Albania. Today I'm here at Cantina Skanderbegou, the oldest and biggest winery in the country. I'm very excited. I love wine. I'm gonna explore their winery. We're gonna go through the vineyard, we're gonna go through the cellars, we're gonna try delicious wines. They have native grapes, they have international grapes and we're gonna try them all. Are you guys ready? Annie? I am ready. Let's go. All right. Hello, hello. Welcome. Pleasure, pleasure. I'm excited. We are excited too and welcome in the George Castriotis Skanderbegou winery and distillery. I am the degustation leader and also I will be with you during the tour to explain all our products and also our agritourism section which is located near the wineyards. As we start walking through the winery, over here to the right we have all their awards. They've won tons of awards, a few dozen awards and over here to the left we have a mix of different things they produce. So we have three different styles of raki, we have like the Primativo which is like one of their best, right? That's a delicious grape from Italy but they, you know, obviously make it here. Over here some more wines and then they have brandy. This is their famous brandy. I'm gonna try that. So here we have some pictures from the old winery since communism or even earlier. We have some trucks here which are doing the exportation of our products and also here are some workers doing their job but in very old appliances. Here we have some ruins of the old winery and then all the other basements we have in this winery inherited until nowadays. Now we're going directly into the basement. You said we're gonna be able to actually try some wine directly from barrels, right? I think it will be brandy. Brandy? What? She said I'm gonna be able to try brandy directly from here. So basically what's inside here are like these, right? Or no, these are just walls. No, there is the product inside. Yeah, but the product but this is inside that? Or just walls? Just walls. Walls, yeah. Walls. I've never seen this. This is... It's made of concrete and inside is painted with good for food color is called in food. Yeah, food color. So this appliance here shows the level. Here is located the level meter and shows that up to here is the raki, the level of the alcohol because the brandy has color. These were constructed in 1980s in this like huge box, right? Over here you have more modern type of fermented stainless steel tanks, right? And then over here we're gonna see brandy. We're gonna pour brandy from here? So this is the brandy premium which is made only from the very best varieties of grapes we have in our wineyards and it's only from white varieties. From Chardonnay, from Riesling and also from Muscat grapes. That's why it's a premium. I mean it's like smooth. It's very smooth because of the its age. It's aged minimum five years. Okay and so tell me why is this not Cognac? What's the reason? It's not Cognac because the Cognac is only patented from the region of France, from the region of Cognac in France and all the other countries and cities which produce this brandy, this Cognac should be should be calling it brandy. Brandy. Yeah. That's it. Just brandy. Just like champagne. Everywhere. Just like with the champagne. Okay, so we are near the barrels. We use barrels for our brandies for the aging process and also for our wines, for the red wines. We use mostly two kind of oak barrels. We use the American oak for the more intense aroma of the oak in our beverages and also the French oak for the most delicate aroma and taste. So next we are going to visit our wineyards and also our small agritourism we have with our traditional food and we are going to do the degustation section there. So this area is full of wineries or just yours? No, just our winery is there and we own most of the wineyards, around 54 hectares of wineyards with different origin kind of grapes like Italian, French, German and of course our out of town varieties. Where's the brandy? Where's the brandy? People like you. You good? Everything good? Thank you very much. And this is their resort. As you can see beautiful buildings. Love it. Pool all around here, barrels, amazing. They have an area over here for kids. In the back they have all the vines, all the vines. Vineyard incredible and it's just it's just open only one year ago today so they're having an anniversary party tomorrow. This is just beautiful. This is like open terrace, relaxed, windy, have some brandy, have some rakija, try some delicious Albanian wines. I'm so happy to be in Albania. So you guys have horses? A baby horse? No, two hours ago the baby was born? No, he was really born one week ago but he's or she's a beauty look at that. Wow and the mother's being really aggressive like we can't even get near because she'll kick us but yeah the baby's right here beautiful. So we have here everything, over there, sunflowers. That's the best part about Albania, it's always like farm to table, always. I mean most places I've gone so far it's been like that. So you see you know whatever they're producing and that goes straight to your table. So now we made it here to the vineyards. Everything here you see is there. On 45 hectares here we have the chardonnay grapes. If you guys didn't know chardonnay is one of the grapes that makes champagne. They don't produce champagne here obviously. Do you produce broccoli wine? No, not yet but we are doing some research to produce a really qualitative champagne. Not champagne but spumante in the recent years. Harvest is between late August and like early October. You know the reds start earlier, whites later. And here we have some grapes. Mm-hmm. The yellower, the sweeter, if they're less you know yellow, like more green, they're sour. Because it contains more acidity. Yeah, you know like this one is super sour. Cows. You have cows there? Yeah. Yeah? Yes. I mean you guys have everything here. It's a real farm. You have ducks? Yeah, we have ducks. Babies. We have sheeps over here. Sheeps? Can we see it? Even baby ones. Oh my god. Look at this. Look at the amount of sheep in here. Incredible. Easily like four dozen sheep. They're all eating hay and obviously lots of flies everywhere because there's manure. Whoa. Oh and the goats over there. Fig. Fig. The best. The mango. Is it ready? Oh man, the inside. You can eat it even with this but I prefer without. So we have another variety here. This is the Albanian autochthon variety and this is called Xesizi and you can translate it like the black place. Square. Xesizi. Xesizi. And here it is. Can I try one? I mean it's not harvest yet. Not so bad. Pretty good. A little sweet but obviously a little bitter at the same time. It's like it's almost there. 45 hectares. Every section is a different grape and this Alright guys we're gonna go quickly up to the top of the vineyards to get a better view of the entire like a state. This is amazing. Huge, huge area with the drone you can see it. I mean just never-ending fields of grapes. We are going to the top of the hill. As you can see we're getting to the top and you can see over the entire fields. Lots of hills in the area. Beautiful farms. This is the only vineyard. So the only vines you see here are to this winery. It's incredible. And the problem is people don't know about Albanian wines mainly because they don't export because people are more buying like Italian, French. People don't buy like a Bulgaria, Serbia, Greek. Not that many unless you go into a restaurant for that cuisine. The temperature here is very high during this period of the year during summertime but compared to the city it is like 10 degrees up to the average temperature. Alright so made it to the top. Look at this view. Incredible. All the vineyards 44, 45 hectares. Over there we have the resort and here we have a ton of grapes. I don't know what grape this is but it's pretty good. I think it's ready. I really think it's ready. Super sweet. What grape is this? I think this one here is the Albanian grape. Whoa. And it's an autochthonous grape which is found only in Albania. Now we're done with the vineyards. We're going to try some wines, some raki, some brandy. It is finally time to try some wines. Brandy. My favorite rakija. We are going to do a small introduction of all our products. This resort is amazing. Nine rooms but the pool area is like incredible. Wow. Just going over there relaxing with your family, coming inside, try some wine, some brandy and then eating. They actually have a humongous lamb outside we're gonna eat for dinner and over here we have all the stuff we're trying. So I think it's like, I think she said like six different wines and a few different brandies and rakijas. Okay so I'm starting off with their white wines. Five white wines. This one is El Genero which is Chardonnay. Okay. Chardonnay. They usually give you a little less. They gave me a little more. Yeah Chardonnay. It's great. Summer. A little fruity. I like it. This is Suave de Vivre and it's moscat grape. So moscat, it comes from, I think comes from Sicily. Am I wrong? Yeah, right? Yeah. Love it. Very sweet. Sweet dry, right? Mmm. This is a star for me. So this is the sweetest wine they have. It's very light. Same time, you can taste the sugar. It's another great one. What I love about the white, especially being in the heat, is that it cools you down. Obviously the best thing to do with this is to, you know, eat some fish, drink some white wine, by the sea. Perfect. So this is Malvrza grape, which is a grape found in Albania. Okay, so this is like the top, top, top of all the whites. Mmm. Oh yeah. Different level. Also the, it was a lot cooler, like it was almost freezing, this one. Mmm. Okay. I feel like it's a little earthy too, you know? A little more earth in here. It's, you know, you can, obviously if you look at them all, they look the same, but very different taste, all of them. I like this. I love, you know, indigenous grapes. These are grapes that you'll never try anywhere else in the world unless you come here. This one you have to try. I mean, you have to try them all, but. Okay, this one? This is Riesling. Oh, so Riesling. Love Riesling. German grape. Wow. That flows down easily. This is why I like Riesling. It's another great one for like super hot weather. Drink it all day. The Albanian Shishibar. Last but not least. You know, this, like the difference in taste between these two and those three is so different. You feel more earth, but you also have different, I don't know if it's like a spice. I don't know exactly what it is, but it's just a different flavor, really, you know? And here we have four amazing reds. So this one is Merlot, Primativo, Shishibar, Shishizi. So it's a local grape. And then here we have the Cab. The Cab, okay. So Cabernet Sauvignon. Okay. This is really big out in Napa Valley. I learned a lot about this one. So let's start off with the Merlot. Oh my God. This smells ridiculous. Nice full body wine. Wow. I guess I have to compare them all to see what the differences are because I know I love this one, Primativo. So this is a grape out of Fuglia, Italy, right? So I've had a few wines from there. Really good wines. It's amazing. So in this one, it's a little earthy. I guess you have somewhat of fruit, but not like crazy. And it's a dark full body. Like you see the darkness in it. Wow. And this is your favorite, right? This is your favorite. Yes, it is. And this is the Shishizi. Sorry guys, this is a lot of wine being drank around here. It's so different. You have nice like earthy notes here. I'm not a sommelier, you know. It's hard to like really bring out what it tastes like. But for you, what would this one taste like? It's not very dry wine. I can feel the tannins, but not very hard, just like the Primativo. It's really nice wine. Cinnamon, plums, really good wine. This is local grape. And this is the last of the reds. The Cab, let's go. This is a heavier drink. That's one thing with the Cab, they're always a lot stronger, right? But this is the strongest one, the Primativo, in terms of alcohol percentage. This is super fruity. This is like, so, you know, the hard thing here is that there's like different spices and different fruits at the same time. And then one's more dry, one's more sweeter. So you have a mix, right? I think personally my favorites was the Primativo and this one. Yeah, this one's awesome. All right, dinner is served. I'm going light tonight, so it's a lot of food. We have sausage, 100% beef sausage. So good. Ferguesa with veal. Wow. I thought yesterday's Ferguesa was good. This one is outstanding. Next up, we have the Tava with liver, kidney, basically all organs. I've actually been eating this on the side between all the wine. I need it. Oh my God, the best. And right here we have veal. And I guess it has like a tomato sauce on top, right? It's good. Very nice. If you guys are into beef, gotta eat the veal. The veal is the baby cow, only drinks milk. I love the tomato sauce on top. Some carrots, right? Onions. And right here we have the yummy, yummy lamb. It's time for the lamb. And what is this? Is that like the collarbone? It's like the spine. So this lamb was roasted for five hours. Just like falls apart. This food is ridiculous. So fresh. Doing my last round of alcohol. Crazy. We have rose, premium brandy, regular brandy. This is like the orange citrusy liquor, but 40% Firminet. Then we have three Rockies. This one, I think, what was this? Muscats. This is regular graves. And this is from Guam. Starting with the rose. Another amazing summer drink. You know, this is between red and white. I could drink this all day. You know what this rose looks like? It looks more orange than red. I guess maybe the light. This one's like a dry, fruity rose. Next up, we have the premium brandy. This is 12 euros a bottle, aged five years. This is absolutely amazing. Look at this. Smooth. I don't even taste the alcohol level. If you go down to the regular brandy, then you feel it. You know, it's less, you know, less age, right? There you feel the alcohol hits you. It goes up into your, you know, your esophagus, feeling your nose. It's good though. I'm a big fan of brandy. This is the orange liquor, Ikea. I mean, it's in between there, 40% proof. This is like an orange limoncello. Instead of the lemons, you have the orange. Next up, we have the Firminet. Similar to Jägermeister, but different. So, my friend's telling me this is really good for digestion. So, this is basically a chupito. You know, at the end of the meal, take a little bit, and you're fine. Your stomach is coated, and you won't feel bad that night. But now, for the big boys. Plums. Oh, that's good. This is straight grapes, Albanian style. Strong. This is really good with a little coffee. And this is different. This is rakija made out of moscato grapes. Moscato. It's actually really enjoyable. So, it's lighter, more sugar, and really kind of raw. All right, we did it. We experienced the Skanderbeg winery. Oldest and biggest winery in all of Albania. Located in Durres? Yeah, in the small village of Razbul, where is located the production and the storage place. And then, the wineyards are located in the small village of Arapaj, around 10 kilometers from Razbul. So, when people come, they go there, they can see the production, they can see the cellar, the big, huge squares that are full of distilled everything. You have rakija, brandy. And then, from there, you can come here. You can stay here. Nine rooms. You have a pool, you have the vineyards, you have the farm, sheep, ducks. I mean, it's just like a real experience. And then, you can do this entire tasting. I tasted so many different wines, different rakijas, different brandies. And then, we have Ferminette. And what do we call this one? This is Ponch. Ponch. Completely natural, from the orange skins. It's crazy good. That's like insanely good. So, we experienced that you can do this as well. If you come to Tirana, drive over to Durres. Only a 30-minute drive. Stay here one, two, three nights. Bring your family, and you can go through the whole experience. Go through the vineyards, come relax by the pool, eat some food, drink some wine, brandy, rakija. Thank you so much. Thank you. It was a pleasure. Oh, thank you. You guys, if you love this video, drink up, like I will. Give me a thumbs up, leave a comment below. Subscribe to my channel for more awesome travel content, and I'll see you in the next child food adventure. Whoa, whoa, whoa. No, we're drinking. We're drinking. Who knew?