The Guardian: Albanian Summer Renaissance

The only place you can drink a glass of”Ceruja” is at Uka Farm, a biodynamic vine and restaurant near Tirana airport.

The unusual holes bore berries near the bank of the Ulza River in northern Albania, and are harvested only once in a few years.

Albania may not be known for the summer, but this is slowly changing, as wine producers such as Flori Uka, who buys the entire amount of raspberry grapes (racuja), began to make a name in this field.

The country near the Adriatic was almost unattainable for foreigners by 1991, and mandatory state co-operatives (since 1950) produced only two types of wine, red and white, wrote the KP.

Today, the country is seeing a rebirth of numerous vineyards and about 30 wine workshops.

In the shadow of Berat's castle, similar to Disney's and listed in U NESTO, Muharrem Cobo has been growing rare Albanian grapes since 1994.

Although they were old wine producers, Cobo's ancestors were forbidden to make wine during the communist era, while he was gaining lost time experimenting with some <x0micro-fermentation” of 100 bottles annually.

From one vineyard, Chobo has reborn the White Pulse, another kind of vines.

It tastes strong and combines well with the autochthin olives of Berat, which it serves during summer debuts in the cellar.

After taking samples of his 12-day gasd pink, we open a bottle of “Shendever”, an explosive wine in taste, made into bottles the same as champagne, which is better than anything I've tasted.

Still, there is a brand issue here.

When I sent Uka's wine to the city's restaurants, I was told that”ah, is Albanian production, and I buy only two euros for a bottle of”.

” Every year Albania produces only one million bottles of wine for a country of three million people, while importing 50m euros in Italian wine”, Flori Uka says.

But with this new generation of winemakers, this may not last long.