Feature: Serbia's wine region of Vrsac celebrates grape harvest festival

Thousands of local and foreign tourists gathered Friday at Vrsac, a town some 80 km in the northeast of Serbian capital Belgrade, to open an annual traditional Grape and Wine Festival celebrating the ongoing grape harvest here.

From Friday to Sunday, the town near the Romanian border with some 35,000 residents will turn into a fair of wine, grape and fruit with free degustation and sales of local wines, concerts, cultural shows and sporting events.

The festival was opened with dancing performances from Serbian folklore dance company Kolo.

For the 58th time, the mayor of Vrsac handed over the keys of the town to Vinko Lozic, a mascot whose name means "vine grape" in English.

Vrsac is a member of RECEVIN -- the European Network of Wine Cities, composed of towns or groups of towns with a strong economic dependence on viticulture and located in areas protected by the system of quality assurance of their wines.

With centuries of history for growing grapes and brewing wine, the town lies on the 45th parallel north, sharing the same climate conditions with the south of France, the north of Italy and other famous wine-brewing regions. Moreover, the soil on its nearby mountains and hills is rich in minerals, giving an extra quality for the wines here.

Nikola Lekic, manager of the vineyards in the village of Gudurica, said that this year the grape harvest will not be as fruitful as in previous years, but that it will give wines the premium quality.

"This year was dry, but since vine has a root that goes deep and there are metamorphous and magmatic rocks here on the slopes of Vrsac mountains, it managed to bear fruit. Vineyards are still green," he told Xinhua at the cellar of the Ber winery (founded in 1875) in the village Gudurica some 15 km east of Vrsac.

Lekic explained that the harvest is half-finished and that first results show that the sugar contents in grapes this year is very high (22-28 percent), because sun and wind dried the grapes.

"Strong and high-quality wines can be produced from such grapes," he said.

"There are fewer grapes than in previous harvests, but this year the quality of wine will be much higher," he said, adding that 1,143 hectares in Vrsac's village of Gudurica are planted with vine.

The opening of this year's Vrsac Grape and Wine Festival took place on a stage in the center of this city with several thousand people in the audience, and crowds of people along the main street walking with children, eating cotton candy and tasting wine.

Cedomir Zivkovic, president of the municipality of Vrsac, said that the festival is important for the city as it draws tourists and helps Vrsac to promote itself as a reputable wine region in Europe.

"We are proud of the vineyards that surround this town and its 22 villages," he said, adding that last year some 100,000 people visited the festival while 20,000 of them were from nearby Romania.

Serbian agriculture minister Snezana Bogosavljevic Boskovic also attended the opening ceremony and said Serbia is beginning to create some new recognizable wine brands despite the decreased grape yield.

"Although the vineyard area has reduced in the past years, we managed to produce some recognizable quality wines," said Boskovic, who also reiterated that the ministry supports the wine-makers, especially those that grow autochthonous Serbian vines.

"The festival is an opportunity to gather visitors, winemakers and all those who are interested in the area. It is also a place where business contacts are made and experiences shared," the minister said.

"We wish that wine brewing becomes a stable pillar of the development of Serbian villages, and gives a boost to the development of tourism," she stressed. Endi