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Flavoring wine with Artemisia species, together with other aromatic herbs and/or fruits, is a practice that has evolved in different parts of Bulgaria. The aromatized wine-based beverage, called pelin, is named after the Bulgarian common name for the genus Artemisia. In this paper, we present Zmeyovski pelin, the history of which dates back to the early 20th century. We employed semi-structured interviews with 15 pelin producers from the Zmeyovo village with an age span from 44 to 83 years. The relative frequency of citation for each stated taxon was recorded. We explored the changes in the plant knowledge of the pelin makers and discussed the drivers for it. From a modern perspective, pelin can be considered a functional beverage since the aromatic plants and fruits adds a variety of biologically active substances to it, thus enhancing its health benefits. We regard the consumers' inquiry about the benefits of the added plants as a driver for mitigating the plant awareness disparity among the local community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even though the interest in aromatized wines is growing in Europe and they are an important part of European culture, the Bulgarian Artemisia-flavored wines (with the collective name pelin after the colloquial name of the herb) have remained outside the attention of wine industry and research. The tradition of pelin production is more than 170 years old and has its local variants in different parts of the country. Its multi-step technology of production includes addition of fresh fruits together with different dry herbs that are combined according to the producer's preferences. The resulting wine is enhanced with biologically active substances derived from the herbal and fruit ingredients, therefore it can be positioned as a functional beverage in the currently growing market for products for overall health benefits and well being of humans thanks to their bioactive compounds. We compare Bulgarian pelin wines with similar beverages produced in the Balkans and the Italian vermouth on the basis of a critical assessment of the current state of knowledge from available published sources. A total of 73 taxa from 35 plant families were found published for the studied beverages. Bulgarian pelin wines were flavored with 25 plants, mainly locally sourced. Pelin wine has been strongly connected to Bulgarian rural traditions throughout the years and its production can contribute to the prosperity of rural areas in the country and development of wine and food tourism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]