site.btaVilla Basareya: Where Wine Ages in Acacia Barrels

BTA will present dozens of Bulgarian wineries in the New BG WINE Leads the Way series ahead of the 9th UN Global Conference on Wine Tourism, which will be hosted in Plovdiv. The forum is organized by the Ministry of Tourism in partnership with the UN World Tourism Organization.

Wine aged in acacia barrels is the latest series launched by the Villa Bassarea winery in Harmanli, the winery's co-owner Kamen Koev told BTA.

The first wine in the series is Sauvignon Blanc, with only 1,200 bottles on the market under the name Acacia Touch. "Every year we try to offer something new in the product list. And the most important attestation for the new product is whether someone who has tried it once will come back (to try it again)," Koev pointed out.

In addition to the quality of the new wine, Koev also highlighted the bottle label with intertwined acacia branches and Sauvignon Blanc, which was designed by Ivo Sirakov, a Bulgarian who has been working and living in Italy for years. "Quality is very important, but the label on a bottle of wine is like the eyebrows on a person's face," Koev noted. The cellar of Villa Bassarea has a rich product list with mainly white wines from the varieties Tamyanka, Chardonnay and Muscat. The series is always boutique, with only between 1,500 and 3,000 bottles.

In the acacia barrels the technologist now intends to plant grapes of the Viognier variety with a quantity for only 900 bottles. The Villa Bassarea winery, which was founded in 2014, reported a grape harvest with low yields, but good quality for 2025, as two-thirds of the grapes have already been harvested by mid-September and the quality indicators are very good. Koev stressed that the reduced yields are mainly due to frostbite of the massifs in April and the subsequent hailstorm in May near the villages of Kolarovo and Bulgarin, from where the winery supplies its wines.

The winery has been working with the same grape growers from the region for more than ten years, Koev commented, adding that the places where grapes are purchased are at most 20 kilometres away from the winery. "We insist on regional varieties and that is why we maintain this tradition," he said. He also emphasized how the local winemakers' association called Wines of Sakar was founded with the idea to bring together like-minded people and help each other, even though the winemakers are also each other's competitors.

"The market that some of the larger wineries have is different from that of the smaller producers. Such an association is a rare union, but we are proud of it. This is how we manage to organize a wine festival every season, hosted by one of the wineries from the association", Koev said. The wine festival in December in Harmanli is to be hosted by the Rosalea winery.