Our Story

Originally from the Former Yugoslavia, Indira immigrated to the United States in the 1990s and continued a successful career in the banking sector. An opportunity to go back to the homeland and work for the U.S. Department of State Foreign Service was too hard to pass up-- Ten years later Indira found herself back in the Balkans supporting efforts to rebuild the war-torn countries of the Former Yugoslavia. Her passion to create economic opportunities for young unemployed people in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where she served for four years, lead her to Balkan made products to the U.S. market.

By 2015, Indira founded Wines of Illyria with a two-fold mission: to introduce people to wines from the Balkans, and to empower youth in the region by addressing unemployment to curb brain drain. Today, Indira passionately champions unique Balkan wine varieties to distributors and directly to consumers through Wines of Illyria.

In January 2015, Indira founded Wines of Illyria, a wine import company in Austria, dedicated to bringing wines from the former Yugoslavia to European Union consumers. Her goal was to create jobs for unemployed youth in Bosnia-Herzegovina and stop the brain drain, one of the biggest issues the country was facing at that time. In addition, Indira wanted to create a positive image of Bosnia-Herzegovina and add it to the list of world’s well known wine producing countries, as the long history of wine making warrants it.

In March 2016, she expanded the business to the US. Indira continues to work with both large and small wineries throughout the Balkan Peninsula sourcing and bringing to consumers premium quality wines made of native varieties: Vranac, Blatina, Plavac Mali, Zilavka, Malvazija, Posip and others. Indira wholesales in New Jersey and Pennsylvania and works with her partner distributors in Missouri, Kentucky, New Hapshire, Vermont, New York and soon Connecticut. As the Brand Ambassador of Wines of Illyria, Indira participates in wine shows, in all the states to showcase her wines and organizes wines tastings to educate sales staff and consumers on the over 2000-year long tradition of wine making in the land once known as Illyria.

So, let’s begin - repeat after us: Zhi-luv-kah, Vra-natz, Blah-tee-nah, Plah-vatz Mah-lee, Ter-nyak!

In an effort, to get wines from the Balkans as recognized as those from Italy, Argentina, or California, Indira wants Zilavka, Vranac, Blatina, Plavac Mali, Trnajk and others to become household names.