Tastings and re-tastings finally allowed a conclusion: Santa Sarah Privat 2006 has been named the Bacchus Bulgarian Wine of the Year 2008. Bacchus, the Bulgarian magazine for wine and gourmet culture, announced the results of its first-annual competition at a ceremony at the Sheraton Sofia Hotel Balkan on the evening of November 21.

In the year leading up to this announcement, more than 250 Bulgarian wines submitted to the magazine were evaluated, with the top 50 going on to the three-stage final. The international tasting panel was comprised of members like the British wine guru Steven Spurrier of the magazine Decanter, he who was responsible for organising what has become known as the Paris Wine Tasting of 1976; Greek oenologist Maria Xanthopoulou; Portuguese wine critic Rui Falcao; and Italian oenologist Arrigo Depaoli. From the Bulgarian side, jury members were wine consultant and founder of vinoto.com Yana Petkova; Lyubomir Stoyanov, maitre d'hotel of Grand Hotel Musala Palace and holder of the title Best Bulgarian Sommelier 2007; Bacchus wine editor Julia Kostadinova, and Emil Koralov, special projects director at Bacchus and competition founder.

Koralov told The Sofia Echo that the goal for the 2009 competition would be to have a larger spectrum of wines, particularly more white wines, and for the tastings to be more objective. Such would be difficult, he said, as tasting was always a subjective exercise.

He also said that, at present, "there's not a critical mass of good white wines to take [the competition] to a serious level". A different factor that would contribute to improved Bulgarian wines would be to have characteristics specific to the country, a sense of terroir, he said, recalling what Sperrier had said at one of the meetings. But overall, Koralov was pleased with this first edition of the competition.

In addition to receiving the title of Bulgarian Wine of the Year, the Santa Sarah Privat 2006, a blend of mavrud and cabernet sauvignon that was slow fermented in German oak barrels and then aged for 10 months in new French oak barrels, also was named the top red wine of 2008. In total, 4300 bottles were made.

"We wanted it to be very elegant, attractive, different from the rest - to be more erotic, even," Santa Sarah winemaker Plamen Kozarev, who has been at the winery since it was founded in 2000, said to The Sofia Echo. "Like people are different, this wine is different. It would be a person who knows himself really well, and keeps going until the end. ... [Winning this award] is recognition that our lives are totally connected to wine."

Hussein Hussein, Nikolai Krustev and Vladislav Georigiev were the other Santa Sarah winemakers involved in the Privat 2006. Kozarev, too, agreed that what would benefit the country would be a focus on terroir: "Bulgaria without Bulgarian grapes cannot be a winemaking country. It needs to focus more on its native sorts. To be different from the rest."

Santa Sarah is, at present, constructing a new winery with its own vineyards in Goritsa, near Slunchev Bryag (Sunny Beach). The first grape harvest is expected in three years or so, Kozarev said.

Back at the Sheraton, taking home the title of best white wine of 2008 was Chateau de Val Cuvee Trophy 2007 by the winery Chateau de Val. The best sparkling wine was Edoardo Miroglio Brut Metodo Classico 2005 by Edoardo Miroglio, the best rose was Vinprom Svishtov's Gorchivka rose 2007 and the best dessert wine was Snow Wine 2005, a project of Santa Sarah and Villa Lyubimets. This latter also won the special prize The Wine of Elle, conferred by competition partner, the Bulgarian edition of the magazine Elle.

In an exceptional move, Terra Tangra was named Winery of the Year. Not part of the contest at the onset, the Winery of the Year award was created in the final days of the competition because the cellar - whose Roto 2006 came in second, Cuvee 2006, sixth and Grand Reserva 2006, ninth - had three out of the top 10 wines for 2008, Koralov said. "The wines in first and second place were contested up till the last minute."

At the ceremony, Koralov said that it had been "exceptionally difficult" to choose between the two best wines and that additional tastings had been necessary to discern the winner. "What is more important, however," he said, "is that we succeeded in reaching, to a large part, our goals in this first competition - to stimulate Bulgarian producers to make their products better and more competitive, and to encourage the consumption of good wine."

The top Bulgarian wines of 2008:
1) Santa Sarah Privat 2006
2) Terra Tangra Roto 2006
3) Solitaire Elenovo merlot 2006
4) Maxxima Private Reserve 2003 
5) Logodaj Nobile rubin 2006
6) Terra Tangra Cuvee 2006 
7) Katarzyna Question Mark 2007
8) Bessa Valley Enira Reserva 2006
9) Terra Tangra Grand Reserva 2006
10) Vinissimo American Barrel 2006