While leaving Belgrade, I was pondering whether the city of Niš is ready to host two wine festivals within a week. Particularly if we take into account that currently there isn't a single specialized wine shop in this city.Shall these two festivals rival each other since both of them are attempting to appeal to the same target audience of wine lovers and admirers? I had to skip Naissus Wine Festival on 17th-18th August as I attended Vince Balaton festival where I gave a Masterclass workshop "Serbia today - a selection of wines from native and international grape varieties". For that reason, I was even more tempted to visit the 6th Wine Festival in Niš and check how the local wine scene develops over there. While I had been preparing for this trip, I remembered that the Office  for Agriculture and Rural Development established by the City of Niš made an announcement of Kamenica Winery Project  at the beginning of May 2012. As part of this project, an old local school in the village of Kamenica on Čegar will be turned into a winery. This project is implemented by the Office for Agriculture and Rural Development of the City of Niš, Pantelej Municipality and the Association of Fruit and Vine Growers "Čegar". Upon completion of this building, members of the Association of Fruit and Vine Growers "Čegar" will be provided a lab, storage for purchased grapes, processing and bottling of wines, as well as a tasting room. I wanted to visit the location where the new winery is about to rise, so I phoned the Office for Agriculture and Rural Development of the City of Niš. A polite female voice explained to me that preparations for the launch of the project are in progress, but basically "there's still nothing worth taking photos of". So, it seems the project hasn't progressed a lot... So, my plan got suddenly changed and instead of Kamenica winery, I ventured to visit the Church of St Panteleymon in Niš. The reason for this is Old Trta planting - the oldest specimen of vine in the world, more than 400 years old, located in Maribor, Slovenia. In March 2012, the city of Maribor donated to the city of Niš a graft of this vine, so I decided to visit the church yard to see the Niš' specimen of Old Trta. I arrived in Niš from Belgrade at 16h and first headed to see Trta of Niš. Compared to my earlier visit, I instantly noticed that intense groundworks are in progress and the church yard is already getting the layout of a beautiful park and green oasis. Trta of Niš is flourishing well, as it can be observed in the photos.

The Church of St Panteleymon in Niš:

Here is what Trta of Niš looked like back in March 2012:

and here are its images today:

Before going to the main square where the wine festival is taking place, I decided to stop by to eat something. As I was walking along the main pedestrian zone, I sat in the garden of cafe-bar-restaurant "PLEASURE" in Kopitareva Street  (http://www.pleasure.rs/index.php  ) As I awaited the chicken in a sauce teeming with flavours of Asia and Far East cuisine, I took a look at the wine list... Excellent selection of domestic wines: Aleksandrović, Kovačević, then wine-makers from Župa such as Minić House of Wine and Stemina. I noticed that the most expensive wine on the list is Minić's Tamjanika Barrique (2,300.00 RSD). However, something else caught my attention on the wine list. The page one in the wine list is entirely taken by wines from Montenegro's Plantaže Winery - the entire range of wines from Krstač to Vranac Pro Corde... There would be nothing disputable about it, if I hadn't seen a label "recommended" next to each of these wines.

My friends often ask me to recommend them some wine, and in the profusion of all sorts of labels, grape varieties and wine-makers, I am always trying to show them diversity of regions and present how the place of origin affects the character of wine. But, it surely never happened to me to recommend to somebody all wines offered by one producer. Simply, no matter how good a wine-maker is, it is not realistic to presume that all his wines are excelling all others in every category...

Restaurant owners should nurture the relationship with customers based on  trust, and the guest who comes to a restaurant should know that food will be made from top quality ingredients, that restaurant staff will dedicate enough time to customer and provide high-quality service. When asking for recommendation, I am expecting a restaurant to bring me a dish that the chef is truly proud of, not the dish which is currently re-heated, therefore most convenient to be served fast. The same goes for wine. If a restaurant stands by its recommendation, then I expect that the recommended wine is truly the best. And I believe a customer may get confused when seeing several labels of Vranac, and they are all recommended without exception... Then how to make a choice?!?

I just hope that this strange choice of recommended wines is not triggered by the practice that a winery pays for "marketing services" to the restaurant owner or in some other way provides that all wines from the winery get sorted out from the rest of wines and get particularly recommended. If so, then it speaks volumes about the restaurant owner who responds to customers' trust by greedy wish to make additional profits and lack of awareness to promote what is truly the best in the restaurant in each category. And in this case, it might also be that the restaurant owner originates from Montenegro, so he recommends with nostalgia anything that is labelled "Made in Montenegro".

Then I made my way to the square. The whole city is bustling, streets are full of people, one can feel that something is happening in the city. Wine festival coincides with the film festival, which is a smart move made by organizers, because the film festival has brought more visitors to the city, so the number of visitors to the wine festival increased as well. From the very beginning, the atmosphere among stalls is lively. The presentation and display of Status winery is well worth a praise as it reminded us of atmosphere and tradition of old bohemian pubs and restaurants in Niš.

I was surprised by the price of tasting glasses and I think that organizers made a wrong move with it. Simply, the price of 300.00 dinars for a wine glass is not adequate neither to the size of the wine festival nor to the living standard of an average visitor. At most festivals which I visited in the course of year, which are comparable in size to this one, the price of wine glasses for tastings amounted to maximum 200.00 dinars. Yesterday, for example, wine glasses at Banoštor Grape Days  cost 100.00 dinars. As a consequence, stalls were quickly swarmed by visitors carrying plastic glasses in hand, or some even brought wine glasses from their home.

Concerning exhibitors, the following wineries presented their wines: Tomcat's Cellar, Budimir Winery, Status, Rubin, several wineries from the region of Niš, Ražanj and Knjaževac. During the festival, guests were entertained by music programme, while Nenad Gladić-Gastronomad cooked his dishes at one of the stands.

The square which hosted the 6th Wine Festival in Niš:

Atmosphere and exhibited wines at the stalls:

Nenad Gladić - Gastronomad welcomed all present exhibitors and visitors and raised a glass of wine:

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