site.btaMaryan Winery: New Equipment and Tasting Room Elevate Experience for Wine Lovers

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.

Maryan Winery in the village of the same name in the Elena region now has new machinery, vessels, and a tasting room thanks to European co-financing, said its founders and owners Svetla and Iliya Ivanovi in an interview with BTA.

Last year, equipment for grape destemming and crushing, a bottling machine, and several storage tanks were purchased. For the first time, European funds amounting to about BGN 90,000 were used for this purpose. This year, a tasting room with a capacity of nearly 30 seats was also built.

The winery was established in 2011 by the Ivanovi family together with agronomist and technologist Stefan Choranov. Later, their son, Stefan’s wife, and three more workers joined the team. “Our initial idea was to produce small batches of wine, just the way we like it, and to present it to people interested in this beverage,” Ivanova told BTA.

They started with smaller quantities, and now produce around 50,000 bottles annually — white, pink, and red wines. The white wines are made from Dimyat, Sauvignon Blanc, and Chardonnay varieties, while the red wines come from Mavrud, Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Cabernet Franc.

Since last year, Maryan Winery has offered its new white wine Dancing Butterflies, a blend of Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, and Dimyat. Due to strong interest, this wine will be produced in larger quantities. A red option is also set to be launched on the market soon, the Ivanovi revealed, proudly mentioning the winery’s numerous awards from prestigious national and international competitions.

The winery does not have its own vineyards but buys grapes from two plots located in the Sliven region. The team carefully monitors how the growers tend the vineyards and tracks the fruit’s parameters to pick the grapes at the optimal moment. “Being a small producer helps a lot in choosing the exact harvest day, since we can select the most desirable combination of parameters and get the best grapes. This is a crucial condition for making great wine,” Ivanova explained.

She added that despite unexpected severe spring frosts and a sudden drought later on, which caused a significant reduction in yields, the quality of this year’s grapes is very good.

Visitors to the winery make a diverse group. Before the pandemic, the number of foreign visitors was very good. There were both Europeans and guests from South Africa, Australia, and the US. These visitors were definitely wine connoisseurs, Ivanova shared. They used to do tours all around the Balkan Peninsula or Eastern Europe, coming specifically for wine tourism. Those were our first encounters with such great wine lovers, ready to cross oceans to visit and explore countries they had only read about, and to taste the wines and food on site. At the winery, during tastings, we also offer appetizers from local producers, typical for the region, to show what is produced here, she added. Foreign guests mainly want to taste wines from local grape varieties, Ivanova explained. Among them, we have one red and one white - Mavrud and Dimyat respectively, offered both as pure varietals and as blends.

After Bulgaria joined the Schengen Area, the number of Romanian tourists visiting the winery increased. Some come on one-day bus excursions, but mostly the groups are around ten people, Ivanov explained. There are people who visit the Elena Balkan region frequently and often drop by the winery. According to the Ivanovs, the share of young people interested in wine is increasing. Among the guests are also members of wine clubs who travel around the country to get to know wineries from different regions and their production. The Elena Balkan is a very popular place for short family vacations, so many families visit often, some of whom the Ivanovs already know well as frequent visitors. Several times a year, Open Doors Days are held, on International Mavrud Day, Trifon Zarezan (the traditional winegrowers’ festival), the holiday of the village Maryan, and the Festival of the Elena Ham in Elena.

Before the pandemic, once a year we exported red wine in containers to Brazil, red and white to South Korea, and had regular exports to London, but after that it became difficult, the Ivanovi explained. Now we send shipments via courier to individual customers in the European Union but mainly sell on the Bulgarian market through specialized wine shops and restaurants.