Palincă vs pálinka, rakia vs rakija
What makes one fruit brandy different than another? National identity
We left Romania on November 30th, one day before the big national holiday, Great Union Day, commemorating the unification of the three major regions of the country with the Kingdom of Romania in 1918. I’ll admit my ignorance here. I didn’t know much about this holiday. But in our final days here we returned to the village of Rucăr, back where we started 3 months ago, to drop off a gift for the Father in thanks for his generosity to us, and to visit the kittens that were born outside our door exactly 10 weeks ago.
As we drove into the village, we noticed something new. Here and there Romanian flags sprouted from doorways and trellises where they hadn’t been before. Jack and I both noticed it, and it reminded me of the sudden burst of red, white, and blue that you see in otherwise-not-patriotic US neighborhoods in the week before the 4th of July. It took me a bit to put this together with the date and realize that folks were decorating for the holiday.
In my formal and informal conversations with Romanian folks, I never got the sense that they were particularly patriotic. You don’t really hear jingoistic Romanian rhetoric or see outright expressions of nationalism. But when I asked folks if țuică is an important symbol of Romanian national identity, the answer was an emphatic, unhesitating yes. This was perhaps the only question I asked in my dozens of interviews where the answer was unanimous.
But every country that borders Romania also makes spirits out of fruit. Often, the same type of fruit. If țuică is such a powerful and important signifier of Romanian national identity—something quintessentially Romanian, what makes Romanian țuică different from Bulgarian rakia, Hungarian pálinka, Ukrainian horilka? What makes it special? The answer was always, without fail, some variation of it’s natural. Only fruit. We don’t add sugar or flavorings. It’s pure.
After Romania, we flew to Sophia, Bulgaria and then on to the smaller towns of Bov, Kalofer, and Bratsigovo. When I asked folks there the same question—is rakia an important symbol of Bulgarian national identity?—they said the same thing. An emphatic yes. What makes it special? Here, we only use what nature gives us. We respect the old ways, we don’t add sugar, we honor the fruit.
The moonshine trail then led me to the small towns of Gjakova and Rahovec in Kosovo. There, the same thing, though to claims of unique purity they added that (what remained of) Kosovo’s wine growing region (most of it was destroyed in the war with Serbia in the 1990s) was climatically and geographically advantageous for growing the grapes best suited to rakija. So perhaps a claim that could be fact-checked by an enterprising chemist, but to my untrained palate, it did not taste significantly different than what I’d sampled in Bulgaria and Romania.
Despite my inability to find generalizable, evidence-based differences between the various national spirits, there’s a fair amount of cross-national trash talk. It is good natured, but is it is shot through with a serious current of national pride. Romanians accuse Hungarians of adulterating their pálinka with added sugar, Hungarians and Bulgarians disparage Romanian țuică as “weak shit” (or more descriptively, the water we use to wash out the cazan after boiling—that’s țuică). Kosovars claim superior grapes (and therefore superior rakija) based on their climate and geography, Bulgarians claiming to have invented rakia in the first place.
Encountering this subtle alcohol nationalism in the Balkans maybe shouldn’t surprise me, and I’ve been thinking about how it maps onto the complex political history of the region. A history that still feels very immediate and quickly rises to the surface, even in conversations with people I’ve just met. I am wading in beyond my depth here, as I am frankly with this whole project, but here is how it looks to me, through the lens of raki(j)a:
All of these countries have a history of imperial occupation, of communist rule, of battles for independence, of struggle for self-determination. In the case of Kosovo, that struggle is still very much ongoing, as recent violence at the Serbian border reminds us. The broader reverberations of this simmering conflict resound with deep-historical regional and global loyalties. Among the countries I have visited, Bulgaria and Hungary recognize Kosovo as an independent nation-state. Romania does not.
In Kosovo, I saw far more Albanian flags being flown than the official flag of the country. Ninety percent of the country is ethnic Albanian and they feel that the black and red two-headed eagle is their flag. But they also strongly identify as Kosovars, members of their own nation. When so much is shared—ethnically, linguistically, historically—and yet the contestation of national identity is so fraught, with such high stakes, it means something to say: this is ours.
From my interviews, it was clear that fruit brandy is as essential to rural survival in Bulgaria and Kosovo as it is in Romania. It is an unquestioned element of any important cultural affair, special celebration, or social gathering. It is what is made when all other uses of fruit have been exhausted, and the fruit must not be wasted. It reflects the specificity of place—soil, climate, sun, rain. It reflects the specificity of history and politics—the fluctuating oppressions and freedoms of empire, communism and, as they say in Bulgaria, “our democracy”, which is a tongue-in-cheek reference to its disappointments and shortcomings. And it reflects the specificity of community, of family. This is our fruit, from our land, by our hands, for our people.
And so, while I would probably fail a blind taste test of Balkan fruit spirits, being unable to distinguish Kosovar rakija from Bulgarian rakia from Romanian palincă, when I look through the dozens of bottles of hooch I have been gifted I can remember the story behind each one. The family distillery working to become a licensed business in Racsa, Romania. The 80-year-old widower tending his orchards and boiling his fruit in Bov, Bulgaria. The young Albanian experimenting with different fruits and liquors for his community customers in Rahovec, Kosovo.
The booze itself is a matter of personal pride, reputation, legacy and craft. But in the Balkans, you don’t drink alone. These individual artisans are joined together in a national project, to collectively assert and re-assert a larger claim to physical, political, and cultural space, to belong to that imagined community of the nation.
For people who have fought and died (and continue to struggle) for the right to belong to a nation that is theirs, that is for them, it is not insignificant to claim a national drink that comes from the land, from the kitchens, from the traditions of the people themselves.
To say, this is ours.
Another fascinating and well-crafted report! Makes this whole venture worthwhile and distinctive!