Challenges for an Unknown Wine Region

Herzegovina has lots to offer wine lovers, so what's holding it back?

Last week I returned to Bosnia-Herzegovina, to see if the wine I made in 2024 was either vinegar or ready for bottling. Luckily it turned out to be the latter. Now there are 2,000 bottles sat waiting to be labelled, before we move onto a more difficult challenge: how do you sell wine from a region no-one’s heard of?

As I mentioned in this piece about central Europe and the Balkans, Herzegovina is more-or-less the only part of the country where you’ll find wine¹. Most of Bosnia is either too mountainous or too Muslim. Or both. Wine and vine in Herzegovina have over 2,000 years of history, but it might not feel like that to the casual tourist.

Vineyards are easy enough to spot, at least if you drive around the main winemaking towns of Čitluk, Ljubuški and Međugorje. There are reported to be around 4,000 hectares in the country overall. But head to the local restaurants and bars and you might be disappointed. Wine by the glass is scarce and often uninspiring. If you see a bottle that piques your interest, good luck getting it served at a sensible temperature or in glassware that doesn’t look like it came from the 1970s. The challenge is the lack of a local audience, and thus the lack of any serious wine culture.