In our never-ending quest to try all the grape varietals in the world, we’ve been enjoying several bottles from the Wines of Illyria brand as they feature an array of new-to-us grapes from the Balkans at a relatively reasonable price point.
Blatina is one such grape we got to try from this brand, and while we thought this particular bottle was somewhat simple it went quite nicely with stuffed cabbage rolls!
A few months back we were fortunate enough to try Wines of Illyria Vranac and really enjoyed this red varietal from Bosnia.
While we received that particular bottle as a gift, we were pretty pleased to find a full spread of wine from Wines of Illyria at a local liquor store with many new varietals to us (a great win for our quest). Naturally, I picked up a bottle of the Wines of Illyria Stone Cuvee as it was made with 90% Zilavka and 10% Bena- two new grapes for us.
While this one was not as pleasurable as the Vranac, we have to admit it had some nice stone and tropical fruits all the same with a strong, lingering minerality on the finish.
Our first Bosnian wine is Wines of Illyria’s Vranac- a red wine that hails from the Herzegovina region and one we sadly missed during our brief day-trip to the country in 2013.
Thankfully, we found this one to be a high acid, low tannin red that goes down quickly!