• September 1992 •

Wine is the capricious invention of the gods. It offers heavenly pleasure and threatens damnation. It possesses the grace of God. The steepest, poorest and stoniest earth bears the best fruit. Almost as if the sweat and tears of the wine-grower and the remarkable stubbornness of the plant in surviving and bearing fruit in such barren soil is repaid by God’s smile. People are different in wine-growing land. They are tied to their steep vineyards and measure the passing of time in decades and vintages. A lot of love, patience and a sense for beauty is needed to produce such noble fruit from the dry soil. Many a boundary is marked by it. Some use it for mass and partake of the holy blood, while others persecute it as a gift from Satan. The Chinese revered in seven thousand years ago, and four thousand years ago Hamurabi protected it against the deceitful Babylonian innkeepers. Plinius wrote of a vine that bore fruit along the river Timav and was darker and healthier than any other. Today we call this wine Teran and it is found only in the Slovenian karst region.

We Slovenians are actually quite a curious folk. We’re all so convinced that there isn’t better wine than our own and so we offer it to everyone. We organise a large wine fair and take pride in having one of the largest international wine-tasting competitions (only four wine-tasting competitions in Europe are officially recognised by the EC, and the Ljubljana Fair is one of them) we also consume more wine than we actually produce.

We just like it so much.

You’ll have difficulty in finding a bottle marked “Made in Slovenia” on the shelves of European supermarkets, although Great Britain, Belgium, Germany, Scandinavia and the USA would be the first places to look. Nevertheless, connoisseurs are familiar with Goriška Brda (Colio in Italy), Karst Teran and Slovenian Jerusalem. The country is laid out under the Alps like a small garden, watered by the sea and blown through with the winds of the Pannonian plain. It yields precious fruit and its cellars hold noble wine. Although it’s neither large nor rich, you won’t easily find a more beautiful and friendly country. Where wine grows, people are friendly.

Jure Apih