Craft
Plums, fire, years.
A wood fire under the copper still, then barrels of Maleševo blagun oak. Between them sits all the work — and years of waiting.
The old way
Steps nobody skips.
How rakija is made is no secret. Everyone knows it starts with fruit, goes through a still, and needs time. The difference is in how seriously each of those steps is taken.
Here, none of them gets cut short.
Fruit
Picked when it's ripe.
The calendar doesn't say when. The plum does: when it's ripe, it's picked. Not before. The rakija will only ever be as good as that fruit. Fire and years afterwards cannot put that right.
Fire
The fire is never left alone.
The fire under the still isn't set with a dial. It is watched, fed and kept the whole time. When to begin and when to stop isn't written in any recipe. It's learned from whoever did it before you.
Time
Then nothing. For years.
From the still, the rakija goes into barrels made of Maleševo oak — blagun, as it's called here. From then on, the hardest part of the craft is doing nothing. DOMAŠNA waits five years, MALEŠEVEC ten.
Burovski
Now it's the glass's turn.
Three rakijas, each with its own reason to be opened.