Grape brandy, without taste. No matter how many different cultivars of grape make different wines, loza is always the same. Loza literally means "vine", but is a shortened version of "lozovača", just like any other brandy has a name ending with -ača. Kajsijevača (apricot brandy), kruškovača (pear), dunjevača (quince), višnjevača (not really made of sour cherries, it's rather cherries left to marinate in loza), gromovača (not made of lightning, but you'd get the impression). Šljivovica (plum) is the morphological exception.
It's sort of endemic here, not in the sense that it's made in vineyard areas, but rather there are areas where you're not considered a proper man of the house if you don't grow grapes and plums; the poor nobodies may pretend to have brandy by making it with whatever they find - some quince, apricot, apple and whatnot, but that's not the real thing.
I know a few who rarely, if ever, drink anything else. Most don't care. In time I reached the other end - loza is okay if there's nothing else, but there were cases when I opted for nothing. Presently we have one bottle, from Staša, unopened for two years now, and three quarters of one at the garden, from perhaps Jozda. Smelled that one, interesting, wasn't curious enough bring it home to try it.
Komovica is related, kom is the remainder when the wine is decanted, and it still has enough of alcohol to distill. Assumed to have medicinal properties, with a bunch of garlic tinctured in it for weeks, you rub it on your scalp and it helps hair growth, or at least strength. Someone (mom?) used that for a while, and the hall smelled of that all winter. Not bad at all. But I never really drank that.
30-IX-2012 - 4-III-2024