Géopolitiques de la Bulgarie

Sofia. A recent survey of Kofas Bulgaria reveals that bankruptcy rates have been most buoyant in the agriculture and forestry sector in H1 this year. The percentage of insolvent companies operating in the sector stands at 19.7% against 28% for the entire 2006.
In the list of bankruptcies then come the food, beverage and tobacco industry – 7.5%, followed by transport – 5.8% and tourism (hotels and restaurants) – 3.5%.
Kofas Bulgaria is a subsidiary of French financial company Natixis – world leader in information and solutions management, credit insurance and factoring.

Sofia. EU might trigger a safeguard clause on Bulgaria in the agriculture and thus stop EU funds for development. The European Commission has been preparing a report about the activity of the supervising bodies and the disbursing agencies in the agriculture of Bulgaria and Romania. In November the EC will decide whether to trigger the restriction for both countries. (Novinar daily)

27 August 2007 | 11:15 | FOCUS News Agency

Blagoevgrad. This year’s grape crops in some regions in southwestern Bulgaria is very poor, wine producer from the region Kosta Kostov told Radio FOCUS-Pirin. Grape crops are 70% lower than the average n some regions, Kostov said. As a reason for the poor crops the wine producer pointed drought and hails in the region of Katuntsi, Petrovo and Lehovo. Kostov specified that the main sorts of grape that are producing in this region are Cabernet, Merlot and Melnik.

Sofia. The Bulgarians are justly proud that Dionysus, the god of wine, is ascribed Thracian origins. Icarus, though, is perhaps a more appropriate mythological emblem for the country's recent wine-producing history.
Bulgarian wine was one of Comecon's rare success stories. Not only did bottles of Mavrud, Melnik and Misket help cheer up the kitchen tables of Russian and Polish comrades during European Communism's final, low-wattage decades, but exports of wine based on international varieties such as Cabernet Sauvignon also earned Bulgaria valuable hard currency in the west. The country was the world's sixth largest wine exporter by the mid-1960s and its position subsequently improved further, not least due to a reciprocal deal with PepsiCo in the US. By 1996, Bulgaria was exporting almost 30m litres of wine to the UK. Last year, this had slumped to less than 3m litres.
What has caused the wax in Bulgaria's wings to melt so swiftly? Devastating competition from California and the southern hemisphere has been one factor. The other has been the fatally punctilious restitution of agricultural land in Bulgaria, with each 1947 plot being handed back to "the persons who were therefrom expropriated or to such persons' heirs by law". Some 70 per cent of the Bulgarian population lived in the countryside in 1947; 75 per cent of the population is now urban. "In my family," says wine producer Ivan Zahariev of Stork Nest Estates, "20 people have an interest in six hectares, and not one of us lives anywhere near the village. Yet to sell, everyone has to sign, and if only one person disagrees, the whole procedure is blocked. Appeals and subdivisions take up to five years." The result, in practice, is that many of Bulgaria's once-bonny vineyards are now choked with weeds. Sizeable exports continue to leave the country for Russia (70m litres) and Poland (25m litres), but quality is dire, and this will not be wine anyone wants to drink once they can afford something better.
Hope, though, has not yet been extinguished in the Bulgarian countryside and I visited two other major projects where viable land purchases have been made, plantings renovated and major cellar investments made. One, called Catherina, is owned by Belvédère (a French luxury bottle-maker turned Polish vodka distiller, with capitalisation from Angostura's CL Financial). The 2006 range of red wines from Catherina near Svilengrad is promising, with the ripeness, vivacity and tannic mass that has been palpably missing from Bulgarian reds in the UK for so long.
I particularly liked the Merlot (sterner than Enira) and the relaxed, rumpled Mavrud. The packaging of these wines for the local market, where it sells as "Contemplations", is among the most avant garde I have seen anywhere, and they look prime contenders to shatter the £4.99 glass ceiling when they reach the UK.
Terra Tangra, meanwhile, is the brainchild of Emil Zaichev, a winningly enthusastic, wine-crazed Bulgarian cucumber grower who planted 20ha five years ago in south Sakar and has now assembled 300ha. My own first job 25 years ago consisted in large part of retailing case after case of Bulgarian Cabernet Sauvignon to the wine-crazed commuters of Surrey and I can still recall the pure, frank, winning clarity of its blackcurrant flavours back then. It's been missing for more than a decade as the vineyards lurched back to a state of nature but when I tasted the 2006 Cabernet of Terra Tangra the quarter-century dropped away and I realised that Bulgaria is, very slowly, inching back.
Andrew Jefford is the author of 'The New France: A Complete Guide to Contemporary French Wine'.

Sofia. The Government banned the export of burnt coniferous and deciduous wood with diameter more that 4cm from the thin end from all tree species. This measure was taken in reference to the double growth of the burned forest area compared to 2005.
The negative trend continued in the winter months of 2007, as well when over 510 fires wereregistered on an area of 6,600 hectares.