Macedonia: pics from party@Stobi Winery

Natalija Kuzmanovska, head of sales & marketing, Château Kamnik, Skopje

Our visit to Macedonia ended with a fun buffet supper@the Stobi Winery where we met up again with representatives from all of the eight wineries we visited.

Wines of Macedonia: the real power brokers!

Steven Spurrier and Filip Blazeski (Ezimit Winery)

 L-R: Dane Jovanov (Stobi) Venera Gelebesheva Krstik (Skovin)

Dr Klime Beleski, Ilija Malinkovski (Château Kamnik)

 

Zoran 'the Great' Velkoski + Gorgi Petrusev (Wines of Macedonia)

Stephen Brook

Macedonia: Day one (8th May 2014)

 Rather hazy views of part of Skopje from Hotel Kamnik

early this morning

We arrived at Skopje Airport around 11pm after two flights with a quick change at Zagreb from a largish jet into a fairly small propeller plane ride on down to the Republic of Macedonia.

Zoran Velkoski and Ilija Malinkovski, the owner of Château Kamnik which currently has 13 hectares of vines along with an hotel where we are staying. This morning Caroline Gilby MW, Stephen Brook and I will be heading out to see some mosaics, while we await the arrival of Steven Spurrier and Julia Harding who rather inexplicably preferred to get up in the middle of the night to catch a very early plane from Heathrow instead of the more civilised option of travelling yesterday late afternoon.

As they eat late here we were able to enjoy some charcuterie and salad with Zoran and Ilija once we had settled into our hotel plus try Kamnik's entry level white and red bag-in-box wines. The refreshing white was a blend of five or varieties including Muscat, Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc while the easy drinking red included some Sangiovese in the blend.