Temjanika and the Perfumed Whites of Macedonia

There is a white wine on our list whose name literally means incense. It is called Temjanika, it is Macedonian, and it is the bottle we hand to people who tell us they do not like white wine — usually because everything they have been given has been either oaky or invisible, and this is neither.

The name is the tasting note

Temjanika takes its name from tamjan, the South Slavic word for frankincense. The reason is not poetic. As the reference entry on the grape puts it, it is named after tamjan “due to the intense scent from the ripe grapes, which can be detected several metres away”. Somebody stood in a vineyard, smelled it from the path, and named it after the most aromatic thing they knew.

Under that name is a grape you half know already. Temjanika belongs to the muscat family, and most wine references treat it straightforwardly as the Balkan name for Muscat Blanc à Petits Grains — the oldest and most highly regarded member of that family. The same reference entry is a little more careful, describing the muscat clan as likely all descended from Muscat Blanc à Petits Grains rather than declaring them identical. We will take the cautious version: this is at minimum a very close relative, and quite probably the same grape wearing a Balkan name, alongside Tamjanika in Serbia and Tamyanka in Bulgaria.

In North Macedonia it is grown mostly in the Tikveš district, where it has been vinified on its own for long enough to have developed an identity rather than being blended away.

The muscat trap, and why this bottle is not it

Here is the misunderstanding that costs this grape most of its audience. Aromatic does not mean sweet.

Muscat’s reputation in most of the world is built on sweet wines — dessert Muscats, sticky fortifieds, and the lightly sweet fizz of a Moscato d’Asti. So people smell a glass of Temjanika, get an enormous nose of peach and orange blossom, brace for sugar, and are genuinely confused when it arrives dry.

In the Balkans, though, the dry style is the normal one. You get the full aromatic hit — and then a wine that finishes clean rather than sweet, with the perfume sitting on top of it instead of dissolved into sugar. It is one of the more disorienting first sips in wine, in a good way, and it is why we keep pouring it for sceptics.

One caveat we are obliged to give you, because it is the kind of thing this blog would otherwise be quietly wrong about. Our wine list does not state whether this particular bottle is dry or off-dry. It prints the producer, the vintage, the country, the grape and a tasting note, and that is all. The note — peach, white flowers, spice — describes aroma, not sugar. So if bone-dry is a hard requirement for you rather than a preference, ask at the table before you commit to a bottle, and do not take a general statement about Balkan winemaking as a specification for this one.

Our bottle, exactly as the list prints it

W5. CHATEAU KAMNIK TEMJANIKA 2018 (MACEDONIA). The grape line under it reads simply Temjanika, and the tasting note reads:

“Perfumed and playful—peach, white flowers, a little flirt of spice.”

That is the menu’s own wording, em dash and all, and it is an unusually accurate note. Peach is the muscat signature. The white flowers are the frankincense association arriving in English. And “a little flirt of spice” is the part people miss until it is pointed out — there is a faint peppery, gingery lift on the finish that stops the wine being merely pretty.

Chateau Kamnik itself was founded in 2004 on the hills at the edge of Skopje, and is one of the Macedonian wineries that became known internationally earliest. That comes from the winery’s public profile rather than from our card, which prints the country and nothing else.

The same grape, three times, on one list

Something we only noticed by counting. The muscat family appears on our wine list three separate times, in three completely different guises, and most guests would never connect them:

• W5, the Temjanika — dry, still, aromatic, Macedonian.
• P2. SAN MAURIZIO MOSCATO D’ASTI DOCG (ITALY), grape line Moscato, note “Floral, lightly sweet and peachy with a gentle fizz.” Moscato d’Asti is made from Moscato Bianco — the Italian name for Muscat Blanc à Petits Grains, and therefore either the same grape as the Temjanika or its immediate parent, depending on which reference you trust.
• P3. SABABAY MOSCATO D’BALI (INDONESIA), grape line Muscat, note “Tropical and playful—ripe peach, jasmine, bright acidity.” The card prints “Muscat” without specifying which member of the family, so we will not claim it is the identical variety — but it is unmistakably a cousin, and it is worth noticing that peach turns up in the note again.

Peach appears in all three. That is not the wine writer running out of adjectives; that is the family resemblance showing through three different countries and three different levels of sugar.

The rest of our Macedonian whites

Temjanika is not alone. Three of the six white wines on our list are Macedonian — half of them — which is a strange sentence to write about an izakaya in Jalan Besar and is explained properly in why we pour Macedonian wine. The other two:

• W4. POPOV DOMAINE VRSHNIK 2018 (MACEDONIA) — a blend of Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Gewürztraminer, noted as “Bright citrus and florals, smooth and balanced.” The Gewürztraminer in it means this one is aromatic too, from a different direction: rose and lychee rather than peach.
• W6. SKOVIN CHARDONNAY BARRIQUE 2012 (MACEDONIA) — “Golden, creamy, rich with vanilla and ripe citrus notes.” The opposite end of the shelf entirely, and the bottle to order if oak is what you actually wanted all along.

What to eat with it, from our own menu

Aromatic whites earn their place at a table like ours for one specific reason: they survive garlic. A neutral white next to a garlic-and-tahini dip simply disappears — there is nothing in the wine loud enough to be noticed. A wine with this much perfume holds its own, and the mint, lemon and herbs in Middle Eastern cooking read as friends rather than enemies.

Best pairings on our menu, in order:

• Labne with taklia, garlic crisps and peppermint. The single best glass-and-plate combination on the list, and the one we would put money on.
• Chickpea hummus with macadamia tahini and ikura. Sesame fat, salt from the roe, perfume from the glass.
• Habibi’s spanakopita — Japanese curried cream spinach in pastry. Spice against spice.
• Atlantic seabass with yuzu beurre blanc and miso butter. Citrus in the sauce, citrus in the glass.
• Lebanese charcoal chicken with its garlic-yuzu toum. Yes, with a white, and yes, off the charcoal grill — the toum is the reason.

Where it does not work: the lamb, the pork collar and the wagyu. Those want the Vranec, which is a different post and a much darker wine.

How to drink it

Cold, but not straight-from-the-freezer cold. Aromatic wines are the ones most damaged by over-chilling, because the temperature that makes a cheap white drinkable is the same temperature that shuts down everything Temjanika has to offer. If the bottle comes out very cold, pour it and wait a couple of minutes — the wine opens noticeably in the glass and the whole peach-and-flowers business only arrives once it warms slightly.

Smell it before you drink it. That sounds like wine-bore advice, and for most wines it is. For this one it is the point of the exercise.

Practical notes

We cannot quote a price — our wine list prints none at all, on any bottle. Ask at the table, or read what dinner here costs for the shape of an evening.

The full Macedonian count, and the reasoning behind a list built this way, is in why we pour Macedonian wine. Its red-wine counterpart is Vranec, the Balkan grape that loves charcoal smoke. And if you would rather go Japanese with the same food, the five sakes on the same card and how to drink sake are the two to read.

Dietary: wine is alcohol, our kitchen serves pork, so Habibi-san is not halal. The rest is in our FAQ.

The card is on our wines page, the mezze it was chosen for is on our menu, the room is in the gallery, and the wider evening is laid out in our izakaya guide. When you are ready, book a table at 29 Hamilton Road and start with the labne.