Burčiak & Beer for a Bear

“Le Beaujolais nouveau est arrivé!”

... well, not really because it isn't the 3rd Thursday of November, but ever since I walked Paris' catwalks as an international fashion model, the arrival of those coveted bottles of vin de primeur has always been a day of celebration (with a day of hangovers the following day) in our household.

I confess that I was a little relieved when I heard that Slovakia produces its own wine and hosts several wine festivals throughout the year and, as I reminded my bipedal attendants, this alone should take the sting out of leaving Spain. This weekend saw Bratislava's "Rača Vintage Festival", so I thought I'd give my attendants - who are still sulking about the weather - a little treat by taking them for an afternoon of tasting the region's (self-) acclaimed burčiak or "immature wine".

Of course it rained, although temperatures did climb - for a short period - to a downright tropical 12º C.

Slovakia's Small Carpathians region produces 0.3 % of the wine in Europe and most of it is consumed domestically although a little bit is exported, notably to Japan. I would remind you that David Hasselhoff is big in Japan too. Oenophiles in the area suggest that the best way to taste the local wine is to visit the private cellars of those vintners who started up their businesses after the fall of Communism. Instead, we took the #5 tram to the village of Rača.

I mentioned that burčiak is an immature or young wine - so young that, from a scientific perspective, it might be a little premature if not ambitious to even call it "wine". The wine - or what might be more accurately called "broth" - is, in fact, only drawn from its primary fermenters after about a week of fermenting. At this point, there's still a lot of yeast and sediment in the wine. Bottles of the murky burčiak sold at the festival - mostly 2-litre plastic pop bottles - proudly display a good inch or so of sediment at the bottom and "floaters". Don't ask me what those are.

Because of the high sugar content (remember, the wine is still fermenting), the wine is very gassy (just like my male bipedal attendant!), so you have to stop about every 30 minutes to unscrew the bottle caps - lest there be a burčiak explosion. In fact, it's been suggested that the etymology of the word burčiak is "explode" or "stir up". The other option is to finish your 2-litre bottle within that time frame - which I think lots of people do.

The wine sells here for just pennies a glass or about 2 to 3 euros for a 2-litre bottle but, after having sampled both the red and the white (yes, that is white wine in the above-right photo) what seems like an outrageously low price is actually quite reasonable. Certainly charging more would be criminal.

What are normally residential streets in Rača are closed off to traffic and booths are set up, so people can wander about, swig wine from bottles, stop to release gas from the bottles, and eat all manner of deep-fried doughy things, and lots of sausage. Although it only has an alcohol value of about 5%, the wine keeps fermenting in your stomach so it doesn't take long for people to get into the spirit of the new wine - the so-called "burčiak curse".

Some of my bipedal attendants' colleagues attend the festival annually and have learned to self-medicate with an anti-diarrhoeal before drinking. After trying both wines, I can easily believe that it does go right through you, which makes me wonder why I only saw 4 porta-potties the whole afternoon. Imagine: new wine and Imodium! I bet that never happens on "Beaujolais Nouveau Day".

After my 2 samples, I decided not to buy an actual bottle but took my male bipedal attendant's advice and changed my tipple to beer. Fortunately Budvar, the original Budweiser, from the Czech Republic was on tap. Unlike the American Bud - the self-styled King of Beers - its Czech forebear is the Beer of Kings. Which made it the Beer of Bears today.