Katarzyna Estate

Katarzyna Estate is a wine producer near Mezek and Svilengrad in southeastern Bulgaria. Its founder, Krzysztof Trylinski, selected the site in 2003, and the vineyards were planted during the following years. The first harvest was gathered in 2006. Conceived with the French château model in mind, the estate brings vineyards and winemaking together at one location, close to Bulgaria’s borders with Greece and Turkey. Its history belongs to the expansion of privately developed Bulgarian wineries in the early twenty-first century. A wine estate outside Svilengrad, in the far south-eastern corner where Bulgaria runs up against Greece and Turkey, Katarzyna Estate opens its grounds and cellars to concerts and ceremonies as well as to visitors of the vineyard. Music is an occasional guest there rather than a season. Among the things sung on the estate is Beethoven's setting of Schiller — the Ode to Joy from the Ninth Symphony, adopted as the hymn of Europe.