Unique in the world, bermet desert wine from Sremski Karlovci has impressed the most famous courts of the medieval Europe so that it was even used for bribing. Not even the passengers of the Titanic could resist its flavors.
After bottles with labels of Sremski Karlovci were brought to surface from the wreck of the Titanic 73 years after it sank, some posed a question whether it was bermet wine that has confused the captain of the unfortunate ship on that night in April in 1912, the same way it made European noblemen and courtiers exhilarate centuries ago.
It is a secret probably never to be revealed, the same way that we’ll never know who brought bottles of this magnificent wine from the vineyards on the slopes of the mt. Fruška gora wine route to the Titanic. There are some assumptions that this extraordinary wine was to be included into the Titanic’s wine list, but it is also possible that some cunning merchant from Sremski Karlovci tried to ship it to America.
Five centuries ago locals made an extraordinary fragrant potion in their cellars using secret recipes that even won over the attention of the Habsburg Empress Maria Theresa.
A word has it that every time a problem needed to be solved or a privilege to be gained, casks of bermet were sent to the court in Vienna. And when Maria Theresa wanted to make a gesture for the court in London, she would also send bottles f this fragrant wine made of 27 herbs. According to a legend, the Empress was so delighted with this beverage that she had relieved the citizens of Sremski Karlovci from the performance of military duty in order to be free to make bermet.
And winemakers from Sremski Karlovci tell a story of resourcefulness of their ancestors to introduce this desert wine to the wine lists of Viennese hotels. They sent nicely dressed Serbian students in Vienna to hotels to ask waiters for a glass of bermet before lunch or dinner. After several such visits, the hotel owners, convinced of the importance of this wine, ordered bermet from the cellars in Sremski Karlovci.
The archive of the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences reveals wine lists from Viennese hotels of that time and data about an idea of all winemakers from Sremski Karlovci to open a restaurant in Vienna where only bermet would be served.
Although every family has a special well-kept secret recipe, it is familiar that this wine is made by putting layers of grapes and herbs in a cask, and afterwards last year’s wine is poured over.
A herb pelin (absinthe wormwood) is one of the most significant ingredients of bermet that gives it bitterness, while the flowers of other herbs provide the fragrance, and their fruits give it that sweet taste.
Bermet is served as an aperitif that “opens” the appetite. However, locals say that it goes nicely with “vanilice” (cookies, bite size jam sandwiches covered in powder sugar) or ice cream as well.
There is a white and black bermet, and the most famous producers of this wine are cellars from Sremski Karlovci – Kiš, Dulkin, Merc, Aleks, Kosović, Došen, Živanović, Marija Benišeka…
Photo: www.karlovci.org.rs
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