Vranec: the Balkan Grape That Loves Charcoal Smoke

There is a grape on our wine list that almost nobody orders, and it is the one most obviously built for what our kitchen does. It is called Vranec, it comes from North Macedonia, and it is on our card twice — once on its own and once in a blend.

This is the case for it, made by a restaurant that grills for a living and therefore has a stake in the argument.

The name, and what it tells you

Vranec — spelled Vranac across the border in Montenegro and Serbia, same grape — is almost always glossed in English wine writing as “black stallion”. We should be straight about the status of that: it is the rendering you will meet everywhere in the trade, and it sits comfortably with the South Slavic root vran, meaning black, the same root behind the word for a raven. But it is a gloss rather than a settled etymology, and the grape’s own encyclopaedia entry offers no derivation at all. Treat it as a good description that has become a name, not as a fact.

The colour, at least, is not a marketing claim. Vranec makes wine that is genuinely close to black in the glass, opaque at the centre, staining the sides. If you have only ever drunk Bordeaux and Burgundy, the first thing you notice is that you cannot see through it.

Where it grows, and why that matters

It is Montenegrin by origin — an autochthonous variety there, and still the most planted grape in the country. What matters for our purposes is where it went next: outside Montenegro it is most widely cultivated in North Macedonia, and the Wine & Spirit Education Trust notes in its piece on the country that North Macedonia now has the largest planted area of Vranec in the world. It is not a niche experiment there. It is the default red.

Most of it comes out of Tikveš, the country’s largest wine region, in the valleys around Kavadarci and Negotino. The climate is the useful detail: Mediterranean and continental influences meeting, long hot ripening seasons, mountains for shelter, warm air arriving from the Aegean. That gives you fully ripe black fruit and real tannin in the same fruit, which is a harder combination to get than it sounds and is the whole reason this grape behaves the way it does.

What it actually tastes like

Blackberry and black cherry, spice, and a dark, slightly rustic edge. Full-bodied. Firm when it is young — the tannins have grip rather than polish — and rounder after a few years in bottle. It is a wine with structure, not a soft fruity red pretending to be serious.

Our own list says it more briefly. The pure Vranec on our card, R5. POPOV VRANEC SMOLNIK (MACEDONIA), carries the tasting note “Bold, inky, blackberry-rich with rustic grip and charm.” Whoever wrote that got it right in seven words, and “rustic grip” is exactly the phrase we would have reached for.

Why it and a charcoal grill get on so well

This is the part we can speak to first-hand, because we cook over fire every night we are open and we have watched a lot of wines fail next to it.

Charred food does two things to a wine. The fat — on a pork collar, a lamb rump, a ribeye — coats your palate, and a wine without tannin simply slides off it and tastes thin and sweet by the second mouthful. And the smoke and char themselves are bitter, aromatic compounds that will flatten a delicate wine completely; a fine, perfumed red next to a properly charred chop tastes like it has been switched off.

Vranec survives both, for structural reasons. The tannin gives it something to push back with, so it cuts through fat instead of drowning in it. And the fruit is dark and ripe enough that char reads as a complement rather than a competitor — blackberry against smoke is a pairing that works in the same way that blackberry against a barbecue does. The rusticity that makes it a slightly awkward wine to drink on its own, in a quiet room with nothing to eat, is precisely what makes it right at a table covered in grilled meat.

We should be honest about what we are not claiming. This is a pairing argument from the cooking side, not a chemistry paper, and we are not going to tell you which specific compound binds to which. We are telling you what happens at the table, which we do know.

The two on our list, and how they differ

They are genuinely different drinks and it is worth knowing which one you want.

R5. POPOV VRANEC SMOLNIK (MACEDONIA) is the unblended one — the grape line under it reads simply Vranec. Popov is a family winery founded in 2001 at Sopot in Tikveš, and Smolnik is the name of one of its vineyard domains rather than a brand. This is the bottle to order if you want to know what the grape does with nothing else in the way. Expect the grip.

R7. BOVIN ALEXANDAR 2017 (MACEDONIA) is a blend: the grape line prints Vranec, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and the tasting note is “Velvety, rich and full of dark fruit energy.” Bovin sits at Negotino in Tikveš and, on its own website, gives its founding as 1998 by the brothers Kiril and Gjorgji Bogevski and describes itself as the first privately built winery in Macedonia. The Merlot rounds the edges off; this is the friendlier of the two, and the one to order for a table that is not all in on the idea yet.

Both are printed on our list with the country and nothing else — no region, no importer. Everything above about Sopot, Negotino and founding dates comes from the producers’ own public profiles, not from our menu, and we would rather say so than let it look like our card is more detailed than it is.

What to order with it here

From dishes that are actually on our menu, best first:

• Margra lamb rump, with its méchoui spice rub and ginger tzatziki. Charred lamb and a firm dark red is the oldest good idea on this list.
• Mangalica pork collar — a genuinely fatty cut with a tonkotsu jus. This is where the tannin earns its keep.
• Angus ribeye, or the full-blood wagyu karubi. With the wagyu, take the Bovin rather than the Popov; the Merlot softness handles the marbling better.
• The Brussel sprouts, which are charred and sesame-heavy and much better with a red than people expect.
• Lebanese charcoal chicken, if your table is split — it is the dish that survives being drunk with either colour.

One serving note. In Singapore, “room temperature” is a trap: a red served at ambient here tastes soupy and alcoholic, and Vranec is ripe enough to suffer badly from it. If it arrives warm, ask for a few minutes of ice. A cool Vranec is a completely different and much better wine, and no restaurant should mind you asking.

Practical notes

No price is quoted here because our wine list prints none — the only numerals on the whole card are bottle numbers and vintages. Ask at the table, and see what dinner here costs for the general shape.

Vranec is one of six Macedonian bottles on a nineteen-wine list, which makes Macedonia the largest country on it — the full count, and why we built it that way, is in why we pour Macedonian wine. The white half of the same story, and the aromatic grape that carries it, is in Temjanika and the perfumed whites of Macedonia. If you would rather drink Japanese with the grill, our five sakes are on the same card and how to drink sake covers the serves.

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

The list is on our wines page, the grill is in the gallery, the food is on our menu, and you can book a table at 29 Hamilton Road for any evening Tuesday to Sunday. Order the Popov. Tell us afterwards whether we oversold it.