KEY POINTS:
There is a corner of a Balkan field that is forever France - as some lucky Macedonian farmers have discovered.
In the heat of World War I, as the Allied and Axis powers fought for control of Macedonia, a band of French soldiers in a trench in the remote mountain village of Grasdenica were all killed when a German artillery shell exploded in their midst.
Amazingly, the shell did not damage the improbable quantity of wine and cognac the French had brought with them to stiffen themselves against the bitter Balkan winter.
The villagers of Grasdenica stumbled on the first case of buried liquor about 15 years ago.
"At first we were afraid to taste the dark, thick liquid," said one of them, Stefan Kovacevski, aged 64. "But ... this must be what people mean by the nectar of the gods."
The cases appear to be dotted all over Grasdenica, like bones buried by dogs. One cache was unearthed by farmers ploughing their fields. Two more were found when a glint of metal in an old trench caught a farmer's eye.
The wine in the cases may be past its best by now. But experts say the cognac can only keep improving.
Mikhail Petkov, professor of Viticulture and Oenology at Skopje University, said a single bottle of the vintage cognac could fetch more than $6000 from collectors.
"The wines were intended to be consumed immediately, and not to last for a long period of time," he said.
"But with cognac the situation is different. The older, the better."
Macedonia, divided between Serbia, Montenegro and Bulgaria during the Balkan Wars of 1912-13, became an important piece of the Balkan jigsaw during the last years of World War I as tens of thousands of British, French and Serbian forces poured into the country to counter-attack Austrian, German and Bulgarian armies.
- INDEPENDENT
