Slovenians can be more than proud of our winemakers, because their small estates produce world-class wines. Some of them are among the world’s best in terms of quality and demand. We can be much less proud of ourselves, as knowledge of natural wines is on average non-existent.
Like many other things related to the world of wine, sustainable winemaking was re-launched in the 1970s in France. Other wine-growing countries have joined the trend back to this type of work in the years and decades that have followed. This includes Slovenia. Given that the previous social system favoured mass production and had little regard for quality, we can be justifiably proud of the progress made in our wine-growing and wine-making over the last three decades.
I am not just talking about organic farming, which started to awaken in the 1980s and began its real march in the second half of the 1990s. Thanks to visionary and – it must be emphasised – daring winegrowers such as Valter Mlečnik, Ivan Batič, Branko Čotar, Emil Tavčar, Marko Fon, Aleks Klinec, Janko Štekar, Aci Urbajs and, of course, in his own characteristic and unique way, Aleš Kristančič, Slovenia has firmly placed itself on the world wine map.
They were later followed by excellent winemakers such as Srečko Šumenjak, Božidar Zorjan, Bartol, Ducal, Keltis, Radovan Šuman, Primož Lavrenčič – Burja, Guerilla, JNK, Marko Tavčar, Štemberger, Andrej Kristančič – Nando, Jure Štekar, Uroš Klabjan, Matej Korenika, Uroš Rojac and many others. The number of growers and winemakers who have practically eliminated synthetic pesticides, herbicides and fertilisers from their vineyards is growing year by year, and many are in the process of obtaining organic certification. Some of our winemakers work according to the principles that the French call
lutte raisonée
.
Among them, we should certainly mention names such as Marjan Simčič, Jean Michel Morel (Kabaj), Borut Blažič, Samo Kupljen, Danilo Steyer, Boštjan Protner, to mention but a few.
Aleks Klinec produces his exceptional wines in Medana in the Goriška Brda Mountains.
Pioneers took huge risks
The first group in particular took huge risks during that period. Both from the point of view of the partial or total loss of yields in years of more difficult weather or later wine, and from the point of view of the markets. Given that these winemakers have returned to the traditional maceration technique for their white wines, they have, virtually overnight, found themselves faced with a difficult challenge in terms of understanding and acceptance of such wines by their customers. The domestic market was anything but ready for white wines that were orange, rich in tannins and with completely new aromas compared to classic white wines.
For the reds, the differences were smaller, but still noticeable. New markets had to be found. Some have already succeeded in nearby Italy, others have found good customers further north, in the Scandinavian countries and on the Island, and others much further afield, for example in the USA and Japan, which are still excellent markets for top Slovenian wines. Don’t be surprised to see, say, Urbajs’ “Organic Anarchy” in a restaurant or bar in Paris. Our boys and girls have gone from being farmers, in the most positive sense of the word, to being promoters, marketers and some almost ambassadors. I am glad that they have succeeded and are succeeding more and more; that those who were the first have walked and cleared the thorny path and paved it for all those who have followed them; that their sales are growing. It is not only our wines that have put us on the world map, but also our young country. Unfortunately, only a few people are aware of this.
In Slovenia, there are more and more people who like to taste wines produced with minimal intervention. Unfortunately, they are enjoyed more at home than in restaurants and other catering establishments, as the wine knowledge of Slovenian caterers and their staff is, with a few notable exceptions, at an alarmingly low level. I am of course talking about general knowledge, let alone knowledge of natural wines. The latter, if anything, is limited to a few domestic and international “macerations”.
Vina Čotar at the Raw festival in London.
Italy is dominated by our compatriots
Of the neighbouring regions or countries, Italy and Austria are the most notable. In the first, our compatriots from abroad are highly valued, if not dominated, by natural wines. The late Stanko Radikon, Joško Gravner, Niko Bensa and Edi Kante began to break new ground at the end of the last millennium. Somewhat parallel to this was the path of the extraordinary Paolo Vodopivec. Franco Terpin, Damijan Podveršič, Dario Prinčič, Benjamin Zidarich, Sandi Škerk and others follow. Of course, Italy has excellent winemakers with a sustainable approach throughout the country. Some names, such as Cappellano, Rinaldi, Emidio Pepe, Angiolino Maule, Paolo Bea, Frank Cornelissen, Valentini, Occhipinti, Soldera …, are almost cult names. Italy has also made great progress in recent years as a consumer of natural wines, with a proliferation of bars and restaurants serving mainly such wines. The high visibility of the natural wines of our western neighbours is largely due to the VinNatur and ViniVeri festivals. These are consortia that bring together domestic and foreign winemakers, including some Slovenian ones.
In Austria, the situation is a little different. The pioneers of minimalism in vineyards and wineries come from southern Styria. Sepp Muster, Andreas Tscheppe, Ewald Tscheppe (Werlitsch), Franz Strohmaier, Roland Tauss and Karl Schnabel started producing more structured wines a decade and a half ago, in complete contrast to what the Austrian market was looking for at the time (and mostly still today), which are aged in wooden barrels and only go on the market a few years after the harvest. They were risking everything, because for several years they had not achieved anywhere near the sales on the domestic market that would allow them to survive or operate normally, and foreign markets were still unknown to them. Much of the credit for their breakthrough abroad goes to Marko Kovač and Niko Đukan, who came across the wines of Sepp Muster and the two Tscheppe brothers less than a decade ago, and more by chance. When the first bottles were taken to tastings in Italy and France, especially Paris, many connoisseurs were shocked by the precision and quality of the wines, which came from biodynamically farmed vineyards and were vinified and vinified in the cellar with virtually no intervention, many even without the addition of sulphites.
We can calmly remark – the rest is history. Today, the boys are present on the wine lists of the best restaurants and wine bars around the globe, and importers and distributors are almost fighting for a slightly larger annual allocation. They were followed, of course, by many winemakers from other regions, especially Burgenland. The situation is quite different in Austria as a consumer of natural wines. Almost everything is happening in Vienna, where gastronomy, and with it the recognition of organic and biodynamically produced wines, has been growing at an incredible pace in recent years. The rest of our northern neighbour is lagging far behind, but I have no doubt that this will change in the coming years.
The now almost iconic Frank Cornelissen (right) in conversation with a Norwegian importer. Check out Frank Cornelissen’s wine offer in Dapper.
Croatia is still lagging far behind
Croatia is still lagging far behind, despite the outstanding natural and geological features of some regions. Among them are Giorgio Claio and Dimitri Brečević from Istria, the Miloš family and Vina Križ from Pelješac, and Ivan Kosovec from Moslavina. Roxanich and Kabola wines, which could be classified in the above-mentioned lutte raisonée, are also highly traded on many markets.
Slovenians can therefore be more than proud of our winemakers, because their small estates produce world-class wines. Some of them are among the world’s best in terms of quality and demand. We can be much less proud of ourselves, because even those who consider themselves more serious wine lovers have, on average, no knowledge of wine. Of course, this is not something to be accepted, which is why there are a number of us – in addition to the winemakers themselves – who are trying to improve the level of knowledge and raise it as high as possible.
