Eastern Europe is increasingly catching up with the global wine scene... Four years ago, on October 14th, International Prokupac Day shook up the Serbian wine scene and put the event in Serbia related to our most important local grape variety Prokupac in the spotlight. Prokupac has become the first grape variety from Eastern Europe to have its day celebrated globally. Immediately afterwards, the Furmint Day was officially declared in Hungary, which is celebrated on February 1st.

This year, the association Wines Of Macedonia launched the WorldVranacDay Initiative, which will be celebrated on October 5th. The aim is to highlight the importance of local varieties, to support efforts of local winemakers to preserve wine identity of the region and to raise consumer awareness around the world for wines coming from the Balkans.

Vranac is a Montenegrin variety and it spread in the second half of the twentieth century from Montenegro and Herzegovina towards Serbia and North Macedonia. The current trend of autochthonous varieties in the wine world does not fit the profile of Macedonian wines, given that only Stanušina and Ohridsko Crno are officially recognized as Macedonian varieties (both of which are quite rare in Macedonian vineyards). It is, therefore, a good approach to highlight the importance of Vranac as a regional variety throughout the Balkan region, therefore in North Macedonia as well.

On October 5th, the Double Tree by Hilton Hotel in Skopje is scheduled to host a regional Vranac exhibition, where the leading producers of Vranac wine from the region are expected to attend, accompanied with regional wine journalists and guests such as Caroline Gilby MW, Peter McCombie MW, Darrel Joseph. The organizers expect that in the future the celebration of Vranac Day will spread to all countries where Vranac is present in local vineyards and jointly celebrate this day, so the true format of this new event will be shaped only when wine lovers start celebrating Vranac Day not only in Skopje. but also in Podgorica, Trebinje, Knjaževac, Orahovac and Belgrade.

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