Touring Macedonia's wine country

Land-locked Macedonia often feels like a forgotten place, tucked among Greece, Albania, Kosovo, Serbia and Bulgaria. For centuries, it seemed to be part of someplace else, including, until two decades ago, Yugoslavia. Unlike Croatia, with its stunning coastline, or Sarajevo, with its airy hills, Macedonia has struggled for the world's attention since gaining independence in 1991 and lacks the allure of a must-see destination. Other than a smattering of castles and a few colorful bazaars, the country's cities are unexceptional.

But those who travel there are often surprised by its rustic charm and multilayered history. Macedonia has been a crossroads for about as long as it's been on a map, a tapestry of cultures and conquerors, some evident in the many archaeological sites in the capital, Skopje, and along seemingly every roadside stop.

As I learned on a visit this spring, Macedonia's best face is outside its cities, where snowcapped mountains, picturesque lakes and villages hidden in steep valleys evoke a lost kingdom. Even the country's biggest tourist destination, Lake Ohrid, a tranquil lake on the Albanian border, attracts far fewer tourists than swarm places like Venice.

Beautiful landscapes alone are rarely enough to satisfy travelers. That's why I was glad to discover several new and vibrant vineyards that provided an easy, inexpensive excuse to see Macedonia's countryside.

Wine, it turns out, has played a central role in Macedonia at least since Roman times, when the ruling emperors favored its grapes. Thanks to an abundance of sunshine, Mediterranean and continental breezes and rich rocky soil, wine grapes thrive in Macedonia. They are so ubiquitous that many families make their own stash.

Despite the abundance of grapes, the sluggish economy and decades of socialist rule (when the government controlled production and distribution) have stunted the development of a sophisticated wine industry.

While Croatian and Bulgarian wines have made inroads on the international stage, Macedonia is still known mostly as a maker of bulk wine that is repackaged and sold in British and German supermarkets.

"There's a huge wine culture here, but we take it for granted," said Jovanka Cvetkova, the winemaker at Winery Grkov. "We're not market oriented, we're ex-socialist. So we're modest and not good at marketing."

No matter. With a little research and access to a car, I visited several new wineries that, their owners hope, will one day form the core of a thriving eco-tourism industry.

Building a wine industry

Perhaps no one is doing more to realize that goal than Jordan Trajkov, the founder of the Popova Kula Winery.

A former investment banker with an MBA, Trajkov modeled Popova Kula after the vineyards he saw in California's wine country. He built his winery in the Tikves Valley, Macedonia's wine belt, huddled around the Vardar River, which bisects the country north to south. The area is easy to reach for those staying in Skopje, 70 miles to the north, or for travelers driving between the other Balkan countries and Greece. Demir Kapija, a town at the center of the wine country, is roughly halfway between Belgrade and Athens.

Like Grkov, Bovin, Stobi and the other vineyards I visited, Popova Kula produces several white wines that lean to the dry side, and a growing number of richer reds, the most notable of which are made from vranec and stanushina grapes, two local varieties.

Producing world-class wines takes decades, and by the vintners' own admission, their vintages are a work in progress. For me, a casual traveler and an even more casual wine drinker, that was beside the point. The vineyard visits and leisurely meals were a way to soak in a country that has not been overrun by crowds, expectations or high prices.

The 20-minute tour of the six-year-old Popova Kula winery included a trip to an underground tank room outfitted with the latest Italian-made machinery. Afterward, I had lunch with some friends on the balcony overlooking the vineyard's 17 acres of grapevines with sun-dappled mountains in the distance.

Used to waiters eager for tips, I was often frustrated by the slow service in Macedonia. But when the food arrived, it was uniformly hardy, cheap and mostly healthy. Nearly every lunch included a farmer's salad of tomato, cucumber, cheese and sometimes beets, cabbage and olives. At Popova Kula, we shared a platter of stuffed grape leaves and red peppers stuffed with soft cheese and eggplant that went well with the red wine. A lightly fried trout, another local staple, was our main course. With drinks, the bill came to just $60 for three adults and two children.

Popova Kula had the nicest accommodations of any of the half-dozen vineyards I saw, and a beautiful tower above the hotel with a 360-degree view of the valley. The rooms were modest and tasteful, and at 30 to 90 euros a night (about $38 to $114 at $1.27 to the euro), depending on the size of the room, a bargain. (Although the official currency is the denar, hotels often list prices in euros for the convenience of travelers from outside the country.) Business has been so brisk that 12 rooms will be added to the existing 11. Hiking, skiing and hunting can all be done nearby, and arranged by the staff at the winery.

Roman ruins

Eco-tourism is still a relatively new concept in Macedonia, but the wineries and other innkeepers are trying to change this with help from SNV World, a Dutch development group that promotes sustainable tourism. In addition to putting up signs, installing garbage cans and designing trails, the group produces an English-language website for an association of small inns where guests can book rooms. "I would say the whole local region is in its infant phase, but people are working to develop the area as competition comes here from Serbia, Bosnia, Montenegro," said Nehat Ranadani, an adviser to SNV World. "We have a lot of nature outside of the cities."

After lingering over lunch at Popova Kula, we drove 30 minutes back toward Skopje to take in the ruins at Stobi. For 120 denars (about $2.50), a local guide took us around the remains of the city, which once had 20,000 residents but was destroyed by an earthquake in the sixth century. The excavations included a basilica with ornate mosaics and most of an amphitheater where gladiators once fought.

The site seemed like a metaphor for Macedonia: 80 percent of the lost city has not been unearthed, yet the 20 percent we saw gave us a glimpse of the country's rich past. During the tour, no other tourists were in sight. It seemed that we had discovered the ancient city all on our own, at least for now.