‘We usually work with Bulgarian wines, that is what most guests who come to the hotel ask for,” says Georgi Alexandrov, chief sommelier at the Sheraton hotel. “Some clients ask for certain brands that they know because they have been exported.”
The most expensive wine Alexandrov sells is the classic Don Perignon champagne, which costs 560 leva and is usually ordered during official dinners. He has been Sheraton’s wine professional for 16 years. He started working in the hotel after graduating in tourism from a professional technical high-school in Sofia in 1986 and serving his time as a soldier. He took sommelier courses with famous Bulgarian sommelier and deputy -president of the Bulgarian Sommelier Association Marin Markovski.
“A wine is not only drank, but examined,” says Alexandrov. “That is what we say in ‘sommelier language’. Тhe love of wine grows with time and with tasting more and more varieties.”
As a rule, Alexandrov would usually taste a different wine each day. That is doubly true for regular sommelier meetings, when many wines are “examined” and different wine-food combinations are proposed. There is generally a wine for each food, he says, but certain wines are suitable for a very broad spectrum of foods. Of course, the general rule is to serve white wines with white meat and red wine with red meats. “There are exceptions - you can serve chicken with some red wines that are not so saturated. You can even serve rose with it, which is very much on demand in Bulgaria. Rose goes very well with multi-coloured salads but it can be served with many dishes as well. It is most appropriate during the summer and is a very interesting wine indeed, a cabernet sauvignon most of the time.”
Despite opinions that high-percent alcohol aperitifs desensitize the palate and make the subtleties of wine difficult to enjoy, Alexandrov says he is a traditionalist and at home would usually start a dinner with rakia. “If we start with a high-percent alcohol aperitif the next dish cleans the taste of it. A rakia aperitif can be taken with a shopksa salad. Then with some warm starter you can drink some white wine and with the main course you can have red wine and finish with a high-percent alcohol drink again, the so-called digestive, which is taken after the meal with the dessert. It could be cognac, liquor, brandy, and it should preferably be served at room temperature. High-percent alcohol drinks also aid digestion.” The wines consumed at a single dinner, however, shouldn’t be more than four, Alexandrov says, and offers the following combination: “You could take a glass of champagne and then some white wine. I am talking about a glass of wine, because if you overdo it with the quantity you won’t feel the quality of the drinks. Red wine is compulsory with the main course and you can end with wine again, but dessert wine. Wine is definitely a drink that can be consumed from the beginning of a certain event as an aperitif and can reach to its very final.”
Alexandrov also says there is no etiquette for how you drink wine - in small, frequent voluptuous sips or in bigger, slow thoughtful gulps. “However, as the French say, the wine is inseparable from food and it is good to drink it, for example, when you have a piece of cheese in your mouth. And you should definitely drink dessert wine with it. If it’s blue cheese this is a unique combination.”
He says his 10-year-old daughter has already started tilting the glass and saying: “This is merlot, this is cabernet,” although she doesn’t exactly recognize the grape because he doesn’t let her drink yet. He sometimes has disputes with his wife at home over which wine’s best for dinner, but it inevitably ends with him picking the brand and everyone is content.
He says decanting (pouring the wine in a usually glass container in order to “let it breathe”) is compulsory for all wines because it opens their bouquet. “Most restaurants decant only red wine, but some refined restaurants decant white wines and champagne. This is not a mistake, champagne is wine after all. Most guest go for decanting, but there are some who don’t want it. It is normal to decant old wines that have sediment. Those wines have to be served very slowly without agitating the bottle, then the wine is decanted and the cork is given to the guest as a rule. It is a tradition.”
Alexandrov says the low-quality cork that some small producers import is one of the reasons Bulgarian producers cannot always maintain the wine quality. If closed with bad cork, even a good wine would change its taste and color and become somewhat dreggy. Such wine has no value, he says. “However, more producers have started importing good cork because it influences the storage and quality of wine a great deal. We mostly import from Portugal.”
Alexandrov says his most wine-educated clients are the Americans. “This is something new with them. They have pretensions about wine; they mostly prefer the European ones.” He says wine culture among Bulgarians is also improving and more people are becoming interested in good wines.
As to wine production, however, he says there should be more investment in the production process. “But we have wines that look as god as some Italian, Argentinean, French wines, not only in design, but also in quality,” he says. “I hope that we will soon be competing with the big producers.”
