A Pole, a Corsican, a pair of twins, erotic French and wines with foreign-language names – a visit to the Bulgarian wine cellar Katarzyna goes down in memory as a trip to a different country. Or to a new kind of Bulgaria. Either way, the cellar’s main aim is the Bulgarian terroir.

The town of Harmanli remains to the north, then follows the town of Lyubimets, and when I enter the remains of the erstwhile boundary protection system from the Cold War, the border near the Kapitan Andreevo checkpoint, I am already closer to Alexandroupolis and even Istanbul than to Sofia.

And still, I am not fully prepared for what I come upon in Katarzyna – the first person who shakes my hand is Thierry Haberer, a Corsican with clear blue eyes and the slightly severe look of a man who is used to battling with natural disasters. It is days later, when I look through my photographs from that day, that I realize that he wasn’t wearing a sailor t-shirt, as he was sealed in my memory.

Short-spoken and hurried, he leads me along the alley through the low-cut grass around the winery towards where the vineyards begin. Once there, on the earth between the vines, he stops and starts talking about the soils, the sorts and the “suffering” of the grapes with a kind of penchant, with which Carl Sagan speaks of the Cosmos.

“Bulgaria has interesting locals grape sorts. Mavrud and Rubin, for example, when they are well-cultivated, tend to express the terroir’s character in a very pleasant way and have large potential, which is worth working on.”

“But it is surprising what a different character some well-known French grapes can develop, such as Merlot, Cabernet, Syrah or Cabernet Franc. The tannins could be much softer, the elegance could be preserved and the bouquet becomes completely different.”

Thierry Haberer is one of the “flying winemakers.” He is a hereditary vintner – his father used to own vineyards in Corsica, which he was forced to sell in the 1990s. This loss made Thierry Haberer move to Bordeaux to work and, in the end, led to his acquaintance and friendship with one of France’s best known wine consultants, Michel Rolland.

Now close-working partners, the two are also connected through their work in different parts of the world – from South Africa to Bulgaria. Thierry Haberer takes part in the winemaking in Katarzyna since the cellar was founded and its first production in 2006.

Question Mark, Halla, Mezzek, Contemplations, Twins, Encore Syrah, Les Amandiers, Les Fleurs – in just a few years, the wines created by him and the other of the wine cellar’s technologists became highly popular and, since this coincided with the important change in Bulgaria’s wine culture, these brands have become a kind of standard.

Question Mark, 2007, ended up among the top 10 Bulgarian wines in the ranking of the Bacchus Magazine of that year. The winery was also awarded at the International Exhibition of Vine-Growing and Wine-Producing Vinaria, and in June of 2009, it won its most significant international recognition to date – the San Francisco International Wine Competition awarded it three golden and two silver medals. The gold ones went to Encore Syrah 2007 (double), the Merlot-Malbec blend Contemplations, 2007, and Question Mark 2007.

“The big advantage of this wine cellar is that it affords condition to do absolutely everything you would do in a chateau,” Thierry Haberer says, as he points to the gallery of Katarzyna wine cisterns.

Actually, Katarzyna is one of the most interesting new investments in Bulgaria’s national wine. After an investment of 12 million euro, it was launched in 2007, in the classic Bulgarian way – with the traditional horo dance, blessing priests and the Bulgarian President Paravnov. Its owner, however, is a Pole - Krzysztof Trylinski, who is better known as the managing director of the French alcoholic beverage giant Belvedere, even though this wine cellar on Bulgaria’s southern border isn’t directly connected to the group.

The cellar’s first vineyards were planted in 2003-2004, and now stretch over 3,650 dekares of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Syrah, Mavrud, Tempranillo, Malbec, Petit Verdot, Chardonnay, Sauvignon blanc and Viognier – on lands that were previously unused in the no man’s zone between Bulgaria and Greece.

In the vineyards’ middle is the cellar’s red building, including a spacious tasting hall with high ceilings and daring frescos of ancient rituals connected to wine; a seemingly endless gallery of cisterns (135, to be exact); a repository with oak barrels and a bottling line, through which Thierry Haberer could pass with his eyes closed.

Like most inspired oenologist, his attitude towards his work is like that towards a game of LEGO – as a construction of tastes and aromas, in which the separate elements are grapes, terroirs and vintages. It must be noted that Katarzyna has an impressively stimulating effect on one’s imagination – its vineyards’ plots are in diverse terroirs, the sorts are varied and all that is left is to sit down on the carpet on the floor and start playing.



“The grapes are growing on lands that have never been used before, they are cultivated almost without chemicals and they are picked by hand,” Thierry Haberer says and shrugs his shoulders, as if to express his summary: what more could a winemaker want. Well, that and friends to play with. And in that moment, as if part of an expected scene, a bit like Tweedledee and Tweedledum, Ivan and Svilen Kisyovi appear. Better known here as The Twins, they are the head permanent oenologists at Katarzyna – those who make the cellar’s wines on a daily basis. The people on whom the winery’s “Bulgarian signature” depends, as Thierry Haberer explains, “and the people are very specific, they are also a part of this terroir. And it is precisely that specificity which is Bulgaria’s biggest treasure.”



The aim to create a recognizable Bulgarian wine is far from being uniquely Katarzyna’s. In 2009, however, the cellar undertook one of the most ambitious recent attempts in that direction in the face of the Cherga brand. Named after the traditional colourful Bulgarian rug, it was created a few years ago as a kind of “tourist wine” and it, along with the labels’ design and the wine’s marketing seemed to be aimed at replacing as a traditional Bulgarian souvenir the wooden, pyrographed vials containing rose oil. The initial good quality, however, wasn’t consistent.

“The problem was that this wine was made from grapes that were bought from outside producers and it turned out that we couldn’t control its quality,” Galina Niforou, Belvedere Bulgaria's marketing manager, says. That is why, since April of 2009, the wine was taken over by Katarzyna and started to be produced from grapes from the cellar’s vineyards – with a new blend and full control over the raw material.

The Cherga label, which has already established itself as a Bulgarian wine, is now in the hands of Ivan and Svilen Kisyovi and Thierry Haberer, who are to fill it with content – a distinctive Bulgarian terroir. “The goal is, when a wine is tasted, for the taster to be able to say, “This isn’t a French, a Spanish, an Argentine wine, it is a Bulgarian wine!”,” the Corsican says.

Whether Katarzyna’s wines will establish themselves as representative of the Bulgarian terroir remains to be seen. In any case, in only a few years, the company’s labels have found a permanent spot on the shelves of the specialized wine stores. From the high-class Question Mark to the middle-class Mezzek White Soil, they have become a part of the new face of Bulgarian wine.

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