Why do Bosnian Muslims make and celebrate a plum brandy that Islamic law technically forbids — and what does their answer to that question reveal about four centuries of Ottoman rule, Balkan identity, and the extraordinary weight of contingency behind things that seem simple? How did the Ottomans simultaneously bring distillation to the Balkans, prohibit alcohol, and shape the culture that would eventually inscribe plum brandy on UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list? And what is in a glass of šljivovica that a supermarket bottle of slivovitz will never contain?
Join John as he tells the story of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the plum — the copper still, the neighbors arriving in October, and the soul extracted from a fruit that has outlasted every political settlement imposed on this landscape…
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