Melnik: walls, sand and wine

A huge wooden barrel stands before you. It is inside Kordopulov House in Melnik. This barrel suggests work for many hands. Grapes must be harvested, juice made into wine, and wine sold. The barrel is a storage container. Merchants used other containers for transport, according to the brochure Wine tours in Bulgaria. How did they carry the wine?

In the early thirteenth century Alexius Slav ruled from Melnik. The town was the capital of his lands. A capital is the place from which a ruler governs. Melnik did not become the capital of the whole Bulgarian kingdom. Slav held the title despot. This was a high rank for a ruler.

Above the town is high, flat ground called St Nicholas plateau. Archaeologists have investigated a fortified home of the rulers there.

Kordopulov House was built in 1754 for making, storing and trading wine. A cellar is a wine storage room. Here it is cut into rock. The brochure says wine stays cooler underground.

It describes merchants from the city of Dubrovnik. They carried wine in caravans: groups of pack animals. According to the brochure, the cargo travelled in skins, bags of animal hide, on mules and horses. It mentions markets in Thessaloniki and Venice, a city in Italy.

At the Bolyar House, look for brick patterns on the surviving outer wall. At Kordopulov House, notice the white upper part above the stone storeys. Inside are large barrels and a rock-cut cellar.

At Rozhen, look at the courtyard and the refectory, a room for shared meals. The photograph shows its long table. Then compare the built walls with the surrounding sandy slopes. People made the walls. Water shapes the pyramids.