to your health to your health welcome to serbia and belgrade distillery cheers enjoy
smooth so early favorite for uh uh one of our favorite vlogs in all of serbia
early choice for one of our favorite vlogs we're at a place called um belgrade open distillery
and first things first the layout of this bar and restaurant and distillery is just incredible
love the design love the barrels in the center of the floor with the homemade rakia on top and
in fact there are these big shelves you can see of all these barrels and they're actually the
rakia bank so similar to a bank with money you would come and deposit your require let it sit in
a perfect oak barrel aging for a year or two and then you would withdraw your requier and maybe sit
here with your friends and enjoy your the fruits of your labor quite literally so behind this wall
is actually a distillery i'm not sure we can go there they have supreme quality control here right
from which fruits are selected all the way through the process into all of these different rakias
that we're going to try and we're starting things off with a traditional cold platter
this is serbian culture when someone comes to your house you give them some rakia and you
give them a traditional platter so big thank you to our new friend george thank you so much thank
you thank you for taking us on this uh iraqis my pleasure he called it the rakia fairy tale
because now we are in raqqa kingdom and this trip will be iraqi a fairy tale so aishaveli everybody
all right starting things off with our first course which is
apricot recchia we did have the opportunity to smell and guess the fruit i was way off
i thought it was pear wasn't even close but we something called not available
some of the most flavorful bacon i've ever had and it goes perfectly with some
rakia this is going to be a great day amazing fantastic i like to call this
right the happy
tour one smells really good uh it smells better than before i i would say this is the most common
rakia it comes from plum all right this is the one you look forward to
i mean look at it it looks amazing right i love the uh traditional glass
the scent really warms your whole body cheers
yeah this is the best one so smooth i'm more of a beer guy usually so 40 is quite strong for me
this is easy sipping even for someone like me
easy sipping doesn't give you that burn or dry or make that kind of heat it's just it's just smooth
i mean delicious five-star rakia absolutely six-star really really nice very nice
and i love the glass i feel very distinguished you know the color of it too it's so golden and
just beautiful really very nice really nice can you tell me can you feel the heat in your stomach
yes that is the point of the good require when you drink it it needs to go smoothly to release all
aromas and everything and after that go slowly to your stomach and heat it up for you yeah
that means that you're drinking a good rakia and quality iraqi right i feel like i feel like rekia
improves my posture when i drink rakia it's like ah yes you like maybe taller
you serve if you like to say rakia will cure everything makes sense believe me
that is all habit i have two trouble okay drink rocky i have stomach probably drink right here
he will solve everything and cure everything i believe it and the rakia for example the
plum rakia is so common even in our language for example we have some slangs and some expressions
that they are uh connected with plum for example that guys hit each other for example
and he will say oh you left me the plum on my eye you know that's the thing that's a thing
right the plum is a part of the vernacular nice you wanna this is this is dangerous stuff
all right two recchias down many more to go but we just learned about the happiest machine in
all of serbia so this is how you would distill rakia the idea is you put in fermented fruit
and then you make a fire beneath it this is going to make steam coming through this
copper pipe and what's incredible is this whole entire copper contraption handmade
so this is critical and copper also will pull out some of the negative ingredients and sort
of purify things and make it taste even better now there's a really ingenious thing over here
so through this pipe we've got steam coming but we need to get the steam back into liquid so we fill
this full of ice and the pipe simply runs through the ice and the steam will get cold and turn into
recce so from here you would have dripping racki coming out and what's incredible is a lot of
the houses in the countryside of serbia have this machine so you can imagine they probably have farm
equipment and sort of a countryside small home some animals and they'd have this machine and it
would be a huge source of pride so if you went to someone's house and you drank their iraqi and you
said ah this one's not very good this was like a starting a fight this is like a big insult because
probably the oldest man maybe the grandfather would make rakia and it would be like a real
skill that he's developed sort of generation to generation they say um when you come into this
world and when you leave this world we we will celebrate with recki so when you're born we have
some recchia on your funeral we'll have some rakia it's really a uh cultural thing for all occasions
really really incredible here i have to say just five stars the whole experience here this is a
must do if you're a tourist in serbia because it's um a real cultural thing they picked it up
serbians would have picked it up from the ottoman empire the ottoman had their type of requiem from
grapes so serbians have taken that and said we can improve this a little better and now
they do it with plumps and uh really great with that let's drink some more rakia what do you say
with the ice
you can find it just here in serbia and this is the plum
as well all right third on the list and we're calling this one the king
right because if you're going to meet the king first you get a minister then you might get the
queen and then you meet the king so this is the king of rakia now it's also golden color which is
from an oak barrel so evidently from that machine it all comes out white color but the oak barrel is
what gives it this beautiful texture and this one we're doing something special with one ice cube
and i have to say i'm not exaggerating guys this is the greatest recce i've ever had this one i
cannot describe to you how smooth it is and what's amazing is it's 50 alcohol so it's 10 percent
more alcohol than the other two and taste less the trick is it's it's relatively secretive because
this is a recipe that's you know very prideful but um there's many different ages of rakia in one
bottle one year three year five year seven year and from this you get sort of layering of textures
of the flavor it's really delicious to say it's 50 alcohol is unbelievable because 50 alcohol
is going to taste awful you would expect you would expect that but this is smooth as butter
it's amazing it's amazing it's not burnt it's like amazing this was six star this doesn't have
to be seven star rakia it's so good guys really recommend this tour i mean you can't miss it
it's nothing to dislike you show up to have some drinks learn some history
learn some culture really great so far so good so far so good
i think this is going to be my favorite what's the what's the smell
it smells a little bit like ice wine to be honest ice wine like sweet sweet smell
george he said okay okay can i try yes go ahead cheers
this one is sweet yeah can you guess the fruit i think this is grape is it no no it's hard to
guess the fruit right this is honey with cinnamon wow honey and cinnamon exactly that sounds really
good promising cinnamon the base is the plum rakia mm-hmm that is some natural honey and the
thanksgiving pie because of that i asked you about thanksgiving because maybe this
will remind you for your taste for the apple pies etc will go perfectly with the cinnamon
so for you this is honey with cinnamon 34 of the alcohol 34. wow
i love this thanksgiving to be clear guys georgie is trying to customize the tour to our likings
so he goes you guys are canadian yes you guys have thanksgiving yes he goes hmm let's try this
because it's kind of a thanksgiving cinnamon and honey flavor awesome job good job georgie
all right the million dollar question ivana what is your favorite rakia out of the four we tried
oh you know it's the honey oh for you yeah for you this one this is the more sweet one yeah
i could see that being your favorite for me it's the 50 bronco what a surprise 50 is not
something i would enjoy drinking any place other than here right because top quality literally
made behind that wall distilled and brewed and done everything behind that wall and they got
like about 20 different flavors yes 20 different flavors as well as like a restaurant over here
with really nice food yes and two bars you can just come to have a drink or come for the tour
and you really can't beat it it's a must do yeah this is one of my most memorable days
in serbia because it's more than just drinking alcohol it's really a cultural sort of personal
connection that serbian people have to this drink yes and georgie is a masterful tour guide
thank you thank you so much it was my pleasure thank you thank you doing his best to customize
the tour for us and just all the details and uh the historical journey he takes us on really great
can't beat it yeah what do you say we get a barrel bank let's get a barrel babe let's get a barrel
and come back here like three years open it up with our friends open it up and have a have our
wedding reception here over a glass of oak barrel rakia amazing it's a good idea actually all right
there you have it guys really lovely finish our drinks let's finish i don't know if i'll finish
all four i'll try i'll try then you gotta walk me home very good really nice i mean this is
unbelievable to have 50 alcohol smooth as butter no no wincing no burning is smooth and let's see
if we go to the countryside we might see like a local family a local grandpa just making it great
yeah this would be great so much we learned so much we did and great food great times five stars
there you have it guys thanks for watching must do in belgrade must do in belgrade for sure
uh georgie calls it the happy tour i think he's right the happy tour all right by the way all the
glass is empty yeah it's disrespectful to waste that's true last step come on
very cheers
okay thank you so much thanks again george thank you very much thank you so much
thank you very much the best the best