Rajac Wine Cellars

Not far from the village of the same name, on the Beli Breg hill above the Timok, stands an ensemble without parallel: the Rajačke pivnice, also called pimnice. The complex is protected as a spatial cultural-historical unit of exceptional importance and is, together with the Rogljevo cellars, a candidate for the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Some 270 cellar houses stand around a central square with a fountain. They were built between the mid-eighteenth century and the 1930s from dressed stone and beams, with walls often 60 centimetres thick and partly dug into the ground to keep the temperature stable year-round. Upstairs were rooms used during harvest and maturation. The roofs are covered with barrel tiles.

The houses stand in rows linked by winding lanes. Each has two opposing doors or windows through which a wooden chute – the gurma – was placed to pour grapes into the vat. The entire winemaking process happened inside the cellar. Hence the line that always comes up about this place: these are houses in which the wine has always lived.