By Ani Kodjaivanova
Illustrations by Rozalina Burkova
Ani Kodjaivanova is a journalist at Capital, a gourmand and one of the people we call when we don’t know what wine to buy or to which restaurant to take foreign guests. She has been writing professionally about tourism and catering for many years and is personally responsible with the cause of Bulgarian tourism getting out of the fog of the alcoholic vapors of Sunny Beach and to start its existence as a qualitative and competitive business that attracts wealthy guests and has a high added value for local people.
We asked her ...
Could Bulgaria become a destination for wine tourism?
In addition to her answer she also gave us a couple of ideas on how this could happen, what the obstacles are and what we should change.
Meeting someone in the Mariyan village is not an easy task. During most of the time it is covered in silence and greenery, and the minimal remains of civilization have caught rust. This tiny village in the beautiful Elena Fore-Balkan, however, is a home of a couple of valuable things: the legend of Kera Tamara – the sister Ivan Shishman, donated by the Turkish sultan as a symbol of peace; a monastery – a small one, but with rich history; and the boutique winery “Mariyan” that has managed to gain reputation only for a couple of years thanks to its wonderful wines.
Mariyan Village has everything that is necessary to welcome a numerous number of tourists who could renew life there.
But this is far from the case. The exceptions are the fans of the winery house who mostly come to the village only because of it, overcoming the poor road conditions and the lack of tourist information. Despite this, however, Svetla and Iliya Ivanov – the owners of “Mariyan” share that they manage to sell around 30% of their production on site at the winery. According to them the interest for wine tourism develops with a pace that makes the tendency noticeable even in this harder to access and underdeveloped region. So much so that the Ivanovs have decided to invest in the construction of a degustation area where to comfortably greet visitors – something they did not consider necessary when they opened the winery 6-7 years ago.
Mariyan village and the winery of the same name are indicative both for the wine tourism in Bulgaria at the moment, as well as for its huge unrealized potential: the desire of honest and responsible people to create a quality local product always finds its customers despite the number of difficulties that they have to overcome in order to achieve it. But customers would be much more if only:
- The infrastructure was improved (most of these wineries are located in faraway villages with poor road conditions)
- Systemic efforts are made to create the image of Bulgarian wine
- The owners of wineries and local businesses – wine makers, hotel managers, producers of food, owners of attractions in the same region work together in order to attract tourists
- Customer service improves
- There is more systematic and easy to access information
- There is more advertising and initiatives for popularization and so on
Wine tourists are in most cases educated, wealthy and curious
A profile that is supposed to make them very attractive. Despite this however, more than 90% of efforts for popularizing tourism in Bulgaria are focused on the beaches at the Black Sea, even though this is the cheapest and most mass product that the country can offer, while the profile of tourists there is getting worse and worse. On destinations suitable for culture, eco, culinary, wine and adventurous tourism that bring a huge added value to the local communities, however, there are only around three lines in a tourist brochure spent.
A question of attitude
In last 10-15 years businesses, municipalities and state administration have spent a colossal amount of money and efforts on advertising tourist complexes, conceptions and attractions that are inherently doomed to failure because they are irresponsible towards nature and local communities, economically inefficient and unsustainable, boring and cheap. Bulgarian “investors” are unfortunately led by the slogans “let’s take their money”, “everything that is shiny is luxurious”, “if there is a tree nearby cut it off”, and of course “the state must help”.
Unfortunately for these investors, however, the values of tourists are changing globally.
They are now looking for authenticity, sustainability, responsibility and environmentally-friendly initiatives and this goes for accommodation, food and attractions. Tourists cannot go to the mountains and like it if you have covered the beautiful landscape with concrete in order to build a hotel with the size of Tadj Mahal. You cannot attract elite golf tourists in Pravets. You cannot offer culinary and rural tourism if authentic regional cuisine has been replaced with ready-made meatballs from the closest supermarket, and authentic village houses have been built for three months from gypsum boards. Summer tourism in Sunny Beach and similar complexes does not need a commentary at all – we are already talking about threats for people’s health, along with the whole spectrum of economic and administrative crimes, not to mention criminal offenses.
Wine tourism turns out to be a natural center of attention with these new (or rather newly rediscovered values) because of several reasons.
First of all, the production of wine could not happen without nature. Not just the vines, but also soil, mountains, rivers, all vegetation around, the traditions of the people in the region , their habits and methods – wine is made from all that, which the French united under the untranslatable word terroir.
Secondly, it has authenticity. Wineries are often located in regions with old, sometimes even millennial traditions in the production of wine. In small villages or even directly in nature – among the hills. There is often a lot to see and visit in these regions– Tracian remains, Byzantium fortresses or natural sights.
Thirdly, wine is a pleasure. It is always nice to have a walk among the vines, to be taken around the winery and be shown how wine is made – step by step, to feel the mysterious feeling in the dungeons among the barrels. It is always nice to taste the wines, to tell the difference and to find an explanation for them and to mix it with local culinary specialties.
And as a bonus – to keep your memories in a box of wine and to remember them for years. For tourists this is a quality experience, and for wineries – a serious business.
From an attraction to business
The mixture of wine and tourism is a successful idea of the producers from Australia and California. Thanks to this idea the business model in these countries is such that producers rely heavily on sales on site. Through wine weekends and tours they increase not only their direct sales in the winery, but also gain loyal clients to whom they deliver wine all year round (the so-called cellar to door sales). In this way one third of the production of most Australian wineries is realized, while wineries in Napa Valley attract around 25 million tourists every year.
In conservative Europe despite the fact that degustation visits - despite being an old practice were for a long time, are considered more of an added value. Almost until the end of the last century wineries with attached hotels were almost inexistent in Italy or France. The success of the New World in this field, however, does not leave Europeans indifferent and in the new century almost all producer-countries started to develop this type of tourism, including Bulgaria.
In the last century – with considerable help from the Eurofunds, the wine factories here gave way to beautiful wine houses, chateaus, mansions, that offer very good conditions for tourism. Some of them are absolute architectural jewels and it is a pleasure to visit and have a look around them – Katarzyna, Bessa Valley, Castra Rubra, Orbelus, Angelus and so on. Others attract tourists not only to taste and buy their wine, but also spend the weekend there – to stay in a luxurious hotel part and also enjoy other entertainments – such as Miroglio, Starosel, Todoroff, Copsa. Third ones look for something unusual – location, good cuisine, and interesting architecture. Or just hospitality and coziness. Overall, most Bulgarian wineries have degustation halls and greet guests even though after a preliminary arrangement and a call, as many of them are located in secluded places and except for the wine season do not have teams on site every day.
Paradoxically, the economic crisis gave a further rise to wine tourism.
After 2009 consumers left behind their habit of spending without thinking too much and started to look for quality and authenticity at a good price. This way wine tourism turned out to be an even more attractive practice – visiting a winery you get on the one hand a very interesting tourist experience, and on the other – you can buy wine at a much better price, and thirdly – this is good for wineries too.
How this kind of tourism has been developing in Bulgaria in the past couple of years could be hardly told in details as such kind of statistics is not kept at all. But if we trust what producers say themselves – interest is growing. The key word here is “potential” – in practice this is a virtually undeveloped niche and a role here should be played by the state, as well as the entrepreneurs themselves.
What can be done?
Wine is to a huge extent an image. In order to sell the product of a winery especially abroad it is important that the consumer not the winery in particular, but rather the region and the country where it comes from. We all know Bordeaux in France, Tuscany in Italy and Marlborough in New Zealand. And how many wineries from Bordeaux and Tuscany can you point on the spot? Maybe two or three from the most iconic ones, or maybe not even one. And this is not even necessary. When the region and the country have the image of a producer of the best wine in the world, it works for all the wineries there. And this is exactly what the role of the state is – to firstly and most importantly create the image of the brand ‘Bulgarian wine’.
Unfortunately, even though Bulgaria has had a Ministry of Tourism for years, it does not create an image, but rather epic failures. As a wine producer Bulgaria does not have a developed vision and brand. At international events the presentation of Bulgarian wine happens first of all with a blank screen as it does not have a logo or a slogan. There are no branded gift materials for the participants, because there is no logo to brand them with. This is a responsibility of the state and its failure to complete it has no excuse.
The state needs to have a uniting effect, to help the wineries with their participation at presentation events abroad in order for them to be under the common brand ‘Bulgaria’, and not each with their own brand which is absolutely unknown to foreign customers. It has to motivate them to unite at a regional level and to ease them administratively, and in some cases even financially, when they are willing to represent their region. It has to be active and look for interesting opportunities to represent the typical for Bulgaria local varieties because they are the ones to attract customers. It has to look for opportunities for advertising, for attracting leaders of opinion – wine tasters, wine journalists, sommeliers, bloggers etc.
It is only once the title ‘Bulgarian wine’ becomes recognizable abroad that interested tourists will find their way to Bulgarian wineries. Currently wine tours in Bulgaria for foreigners are offered by no more than 2-3 tourist companies, and the number of these tourists is no more than a couple of thousand each year.
Good news is Plovdiv hosting European capital of culture 2019 brought more gains to Bulgarian wine than the state tourist administration has achieved for decades.
During the last year several international wine conferences took place in Plovdiv, as well as competitions and massive events (Digital Wine Communications Conference 2015, Concourse Mondial de Bruxelles 2016 and others), that brought to Bulgaria some of the most influential wine personalities in Europe. Next year the town will host the World Congress of vine growing and wine producing and the 15th General Assembly of the World organisation of the vine and wine. This is a huge chance for Bulgarian wine to find its place on the competitive wine market.
Another good news is that the wineries themselves have started to mature for the idea to work together instead of just looking at each other as competitors. Several united Bulgarian producers succeeded in getting European funding for the promotion of typical products in third countries. This way Bulgarian wine was mentioned in the U.S. and China, for example. In addition, an association of other wineries attracted the attention of the wine critics in London – the most influential market in the world.
Recently, the first map of wineries and wine attractions in the Melnik region was created.
This might not sound as something very significant but as far as Bulgarian tourists are concerned, the main reason for the limited number of visits by them is the lack of actual and well systematized information about the wineries that greet guests – who they are, where they are located, what their working hours are, what services they offer, could a tour of a couple of wineries be done during the weekend or not, what other interesting attractions there are around etc. There is a huge number of opportunities in the face of the Internet, mobile communications and social networks which as a marketing channel are highly underdeveloped in this sphere, but this will not be the case for long.
Wine tourism is surely going to happen and be the newest most favourite thing, just because all the necessary contents are available – we just need to connect the dots now. Question is whether we are going to do it fast or we are going to waste more time for investments with more fake whiskey and boring fortresses.
