At the winery, tour coordinator Tzvetelina Shutova shows me around the series of concrete buildings and takes me to the future tasting room, which she hopes will be ready by June. Tzvetelina not only will provide tours on request, but if visitors are interested, she will arrange for them to help harvest grapes or visit the numerous festivals that nearby villages organize, with wine, food and music.
Every man and woman in the region, she says, is involved in making wine. She sniffs in dismay when I ask about the people along the roadside who sell their own home-brewed wines in recycled plastic Coca-Cola bottles.
With its sand cliffs and white-and-brown homes, Melnik is one of Bulgaria's "museum towns," noted for their historical and cultural significance.
(Embassy Of Bulgaria)
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Damianitza Winery, and many like it, have been working hard to create premium wines. "We used to make wines for the Russian market; now we are making fine wines for people expecting quality, not quantity," says Tzvetelina.
About 50 wineries in Bulgaria are open to visitors, said Tzvetelina, who is putting together a guide she hopes will help promote wine tours all over the country. Wine connoisseurs in Europe and the United States are increasingly enthusiastic about Bulgarian wines, particularly the merlots and cabernet sauvignons that are among the specialties of Damianitza.
Just down the road, I stop for a visit in Melnik, one of a dozen or so villages that have been designated "museum towns" by the Bulgarian government. In each case, the town is made up of charming old buildings of historic and architectural significance that owners are required to protect and preserve. Sand cliffs, sculpted by wind and rain, tower above Melnik. The tall, narrow buildings that snake up the Pirin Mountains are all painted brown and white. The color choice is by national decree, in keeping with regional tradition for buildings in the Bulgarian "national revival" style.
A Monastic Marvel
That night in the small city of Sandanski, which is famed for its hot water springs and huge spa, I settle into a lovely new boutique hotel atop a hill. My large, modern room is furnished with imported Italian furniture, and I have a great view of the city from a wall-size picture window. The tab: $68 a night.
Closeup, Sandanski shows the scars of decades of deferred maintenance. But from my window above the city, Sandanski looks like a scene from a poster of Greece.
A 30-minute massage costs less than $20, and I follow it with a fine meal of wild mushroom risotto for under $10.
But my greatest treat of the trip still awaits, about 30 winding miles off the main highway that will take me back to Sofia. This time, I easily find the monastery nestled in the Rila Mountains, more than 4,000 feet above sea level.
The Rila Monastery, founded in the 10th century, is considered the holiest place in Bulgaria and is designated a World Heritage site by the United Nations. Although plundered by various invaders over the centuries, the monastery retained its place as a center of Bulgarian art, religion and culture.
The intricately painted wooden building with graceful arches wraps around a grassy square the size of a football field. At the entrance, when I ask if anyone speaks English, a man scowls and says "no" in a manner that suggests the question is an insult.
Yet you barely need words to appreciate the building, with its four levels of colorful balconies, massive church, museum and hundreds of monastic cells.
More than 1,200 frescoes by Bulgaria's finest artists of the 1800s cover the walls of the monastery church. Museum holdings include such items as an 18th-century cross that a Brother Raphael spent 12 years carving -- ruining his eyesight to engrave 140 miniature Biblical scenes.
As the car rental agent promised, Bulgaria -- even the small part I was able to see -- has many beautiful things.
