If you give a Bulgarian man some grapes, he’ll want to make wine. After he drinks the wine, he’ll want to use the pressed and fermented remains of the grapes to make a traditional brandy called rakia. This is easily the most famous cliché about Bulgaria, but in my experience it’s not that far from the truth.
And so I found myself pitting plums in a remote village one Saturday afternoon this summer, taking part in a long tradition of fermenting grapes in Bulgaria. With last year’s wine nearly finished, we were starting the preparations for this year’s rakia.