site.btaPlovdiv to Host Mavrud Festival

An urban wine festival will be held in the southern city of Plovdiv October 21-22, said the organizers from the Bulgarian Association of Wine Professionals. It is part of the events on the programme of the World Mavrud Day and will be held for a fourth year in a row. The focus will be on century-old traditions in Bulgaria and modern wine-making.

The Urban Wine Fest will be held in the city centre, in the square in front of the Port Office building. Wine lovers can taste over 40 local wine varieties produced by 34 wineries from all wine regions in Bulgaria. Among them will be reds, whites, pinks, orange and sparkling wine, including organic.

There will be street food stands, DJ and a brass band as well.

The Plovdiv Urban Wine Fest is the third such event. The first was held in Sofia on October 1 and the second in Varna, on the Black Sea, on October 15.

The culmination will on World Mavrud Day on October 26. That is the day when Bulgaria celebrates the feast day of St. Demetrius and also the day when close to a century ago a major mavrud winery in the southern town of Assenovgrad, started harvesting its grapes.

The agenda for the World Mavrud Day includes an international conference that will discuss the importance of local varieties for developing a national wine brand and wine tourism in Bulgaria. International (including two Masters of Wine) and Bulgarian specialists in the fields of wine, oenology, tourism and wine marketing will present best practices from Bulgaria and abroad. Master classes and a round table will discuss regionalization, trade and export. The conference is business-to-business and is aimed at winegrowers, winemakers, retailers, restaurateurs, tour operators, among other professionals in the wine industry. Guests from Germany, the United Kingdom, Austria, Spain, Hungary, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, Poland, the US, and Canada will attend the conference.

The International Mavrud Day is supported by the Tourism Ministry, Agriculture Ministry, State Fund Agriculture, Sofia Municipality, and Plovdiv Municipality. The initiative is sponsored by MasterCard, Hoval, Herti and Devin.