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.
Much of modern-day Bulgaria and Northern Greece was inhabited by loosely organized Thracian tribes during the first millennium or so before Christ. Legend has it that they have made wine along the banks of the Maritsa river for the last 5,000 years. The ancient Greek poet Homer partially corroborates this in his epics written around 800 BCE. From The Iliad:
