Pelisterka: The Macedonian Mineral Water from the Foot of Pelister
Pelisterka (Macedonian: Пелистерка) is a natural mineral water from boreholes beneath the Pelister mountains near Bitola, sparkling straight from the source and so low in minerals that it tastes like ordinary water - the plainest thing in Macedonian cuisine, and the one that ends up on every table.
Where Pelisterka Got Its Name
The water wasn't named by a marketing team but by a public poll. When the Bitola farming combine Lozar branched out into mineral water and needed a name for it, it asked the public: some four hundred votes came in with a hundred and thirty different suggestions, among them Pelagonija after the plain around the city and Herakleja after the ancient town on its edge. Goce Dimovski from Bitola won with Pelisterka - after Mount Pelister, which rises above the city and gave its name to the country's oldest national park - and took home five hundred dinars and a few free bottles. What the word Pelister itself means, nobody knows for certain: the folk version talks about "five leaves", the linguists about white stone, the Greeks about a dove that the rocky summit supposedly resembles from a distance. So the water is named after a mountain whose name nobody can translate.
At home Pelisterka leads the field among sparkling waters, while the still market belongs to Gorska, a brand a generation younger.
Who Bottles Pelisterka, and Since When
The label says "since 1953" and the number is true, just not about the water. The Lozar company was founded in Bitola in 1953 to grow grapes and make wine; it didn't start bottling mineral water until 1968, when boreholes and carbon dioxide production joined the vineyards, and the first Pelisterka reached the shops in green glass bottles. The green has stayed to this day, only the glass has mostly given way to plastic. The still version, which the company bluntly called Obična, meaning Ordinary, arrived more than forty years later, by which time the brand was a byword for bubbles.
What's Inside and Which Bottle Is Which
The water comes from two bottling plants in Medžitlija, a village just short of the Greek border, from boreholes reaching down to a hundred and twenty meters, and it brings its bubbles up from underground - the company doesn't add them - it only bottles the water. The mineral content is low, which in practice means Pelisterka has none of that salty, metallic trace of spa springs and you can drink it by the liter without feeling like you're on a health cure. Macedonians call any sparkling mineral water kisela voda, sour water - and a Czech can't help smiling at that, because kyselka, our own word for naturally sparkling water back home, says exactly the same thing. Skopje even has a whole district named Kisela Voda after a local spring, so saying "I'm off to the sour water" can mean more than one thing there.
People drink Pelisterka with everything, everywhere: with coffee, which in a café comes with a glass of water you never had to ask for - an old Balkan custom, said to have started as a way to rinse the spoon - with rakija, with lunch, on the bus.
I drank Pelisterka the whole time I was traveling around Macedonia, switching between the sparkling and the still one. There is nothing to say about the taste, and I mean that as praise. A half-liter bottle in the supermarket cost 22 MKD (0.40 EUR), the cheapest thing I bought over and over again in the country.
