At the Crossroads of Europe, Slovenia Returns to Its Winemaking Roots

Class transcript:

All right, release the hounds. Happy Sunday, one and all. A pleasure to have you with us for our 21st consecutive Sunday. We are thrilled to be celebrating a different corner of the continent this week. We have, you know, taken a deep dive into some of the most classic and celebrated regions of Europe, but we've yet to visit Central and Eastern Europe. And we're going to take that initial foray today, and we're going to explore the wine culture of Slovenia, dealing with a country here that is about the size of Massachusetts that produces about as much wine as Slovenia. Sonoma County, California, but that is notable for the richness of its winemaking history and the richness of those traditions, and the heterogeneity, the sheer diversity of its offerings.

Predominantly white, but, you know, more interesting than your workaday white because the Slovenians have embraced white wine on the skins and old regulars of Slovenia. The Tailcoat Wine School will know that we absolutely adore white wine when it is left on the skins. It's just more interesting for us all that way. We have fully six wines to celebrate today's topic. We have a pair of Pinot Grigio in Slovenia. They call it Steady Pinot. We have a double down on those heavy skin contact orange wines, one from Riesling, one from a native varietal called Robolo, which we'll discuss at length, and then a pair of lighter red wines in Pinot Noir. It's called Modri Pinot in Slovenia, and Blaufränkish as well, which recent genetic testing has indicated originated in Slovenia, so they can claim that as one of their own in a really fascinating way.

Thank you all, as always, for making this a part of your Sunday routine. I never imagined that we would be at 21 consecutive lessons. We can drink on Sundays, we can drink in the morning, we can drink in the afternoon, we can drink in the afternoon. We can drink in the afternoon. We've got a set of three different things that we are going to be doing at the end of today's production to celebrate that fact, and hopefully I will not shower the restaurant, the Riddler's Hour studio, and or my laptop with water during that disgorgement and celebration. So, without further ado, we've given the stragglers sufficient time to join us here, and I want to get to the subject at hand, Slovenia. Slavon's Tent. Big ups!

First, just, you know, by way of kind of, you know, general announcement to all the Slovenians in the audience. I got multiple emails from Slovenes excited we were dedicating a class to the wines of their homeland. And I apologize in advance to all of you for mispronunciation and any misinformation that I give out about Slovenian wine, Slovenian culture. It's a topic that, you know, I am just beginning to learn more about and really excited about. So please hit up the chat with any corrections throughout the lesson. We'd love to hear from you about what makes your drinking culture, you know, just so special and what you love about, you know, some of the grape varietals and some of the wines that we are covering today.

But, you know, thank you so much for signing up for this virtual lesson. Big birthday ups to Giselle McMillan joining us as a guest speaker. Giselle McMillan is the oldest ever from Victoria, British Columbia. That's Vancouver Island. That's like a continent away. Giselle, it's 1 o'clock. Happy birthday, girl. Thank you so much for making this part of your regular routine. Also, wanted to thank Alicia Bretz. She spent her honeymoon in Friuli and Slovenia and graciously shared some of her pictures with us for the sake of this class. They're absolutely stunning. They make me wish that I had visited Slovenia, they make me wish that I could visit Slovenia, but at the very least we can drink the wine and we can use that you know and engage the transportive powers of wine for the sake of celebrating this amazing drinking culture.

We have a bit of verse as we always do to kick things off and you know be remiss if I didn't share a little Slovenian poetry. This comes from the country's national poet, romantic poet, 19th century, really the father of Slovenian modern Slovenian literature, that's Frantz Pešeren. He has a series of 14 sonnets, this is the last of them under the title A Wreath of Sonnets. Fresh flowers will spread fragrance far and near like roses when the winter's passed away and spring displays its marvelous array while through the trees, white scabbards of the trees will grow.

I know I scarce deserve such bliss; my mind is full of dread that you may still disdain these poems or be vexed by them again. Let them at least some little favor find with you to ease by his bitter pain a Slovene wreath your poet has entwined. And a Slovene wreath, your poet has entwined. Wreath we will entwine today for the sake of our lesson. So without further ado, Slovenia is the land of the South Slavs, the Slavic people who spread throughout Central and Eastern Europe; first made their way there in the 6th and 7th century after this common era. The inhabitants of Slovenia were already getting their drink on though, it should be said, so the Slovenes are hugely proud that their traditional wine making tradition of wine making predates the intervention of the Romans.

You know the common story throughout you know Western Europe is that wine making began with the Romans but in Slovenia it began with the Illyrians and the Mikkelts in the 5th and 4th century before common era. So prior to the arrival of the namesake Slavs that speak the Slovenian language and you know occupy the bulk of country today, wine making has been a huge success. It's a hugely important part of the culture in this corner of the world. It should be said as well that you know Slovenia has always been kind of at the border of various empires, stretching back to the Roman era. This is a map of the former Yugoslavia, but you know you get a sense here, you are on the eastern edge of the Adriatic, across from the Italian peninsula.

Slovenia sits kind of at the intersection of northern and southern Europe; the intersection of eastern and western is, you know, truly centrally located, and you know that has really kind of dictated much of its history. So there is you know this strong native Slovenian culture but there's a strong influence equally from the Romans, from the Italians, from the Friulians in the West, from the Austrians and Hungarians to the north and east and then to the south you have a you know a stronger Slavic influence. But Slovenia itself albeit a very small country has many proud traditions. First and foremost former president said that every Slovenian you know has the patriotic obligation to climb at Mount Triglav which was formerly the highest point at almost 10,000 feet in the world.

The former Yugoslavia and adorns Slovenia's flag to this very day and gives you a small taste of how cartoonishly beautiful this region is. Yugoslavia was born after World War I. The entire region, the powder keg of Europe as it were, had a very tumultuous birth into the modern era. You know I don't understate you know the historical pain and the bloodshed that has happened in such a small corner of the world you know stretching back to World War I. You know I don't understate you know the historical pain and the bloodshed that has happened in such a small corner of the world you know stretching back to World War I. A farewell to arms. Hemingway's famous missive about World War I was written about the millions of soldiers that lost their lives in the battlefields that stretched between Slovenia and Italy.

And you know it should be said that you know the border between those two countries was drawn after the First World War somewhat haphazardly so that you had Slovenes on the Italian side and Italians on the Slovene side. And you know there are all sorts of you know historical anecdotes about how preposterous these borders were, you know. People say that a farmer had a border drawn between his house and his his, you know, commode in his outsource. It said that, you know, a shepherd or you know someone, you know, watching his herd, you know, his cows entered the barn in Italian territory and they left in Slovenia. So, you know, in the course of several decades, you know, you hear about you know grandfathers of current wine makers who were, you know, had three different passports.

Fortuitously, Slovenia managed to escape much of the tumult, the turmoil that characterized the Balkan region after the breakup of the former Yugoslavia. And it was the first republic to declare its independence from Yugoslavia. And there was an abortive 10-day war thereafter. The Serbians never really got their act together for the sake of keeping the Slovenians in the mix. Slovenia was very well organized and managed to emerge into its modern form, you know, very elegantly, as it were, and has since joined the European Union, has since taken on the euro as its currency, and has since among the, you know, kind of major central and eastern European wine regions, really thrived the most. And, you know, we're going to talk about, you know, some of the things that happened under communism, you know, whatever the merits of state-sponsored socialism, it was very much a quantity over quality kind of paradigm.

And, you know, Slovenia has this, you know, incredible tradition of, you know, small tenant farmers. You're talking about a country, as I said, the size of Massachusetts that has almost 30,000 individual producers. You know, that is mind-boggling. Everybody is making wine here from a multitude of different grapes. And, you know, this poetic sense in which, because under the communist regime, you know, there was this enforced conformity. There was this enforced level of industrialization. Communist agriculture was heavily predicated on, you know, very aggressive chemical treatments. You see the Slovenians now moving against that. You see a really strong move among the small major artisanal producers, many of which will feature today, you know, toward organic practices, toward biodynamic practices, and toward embracing the diversity, the native grapes, you know, toward embracing nonconformity for its own sake.

They're not seeking to make, you know, wines that will become major international brands. They are seeking to produce artisanal products that truly speak to a place. And, you know, in my mind, that is always worth celebrating. Before I forget to mention it, it should be said that the oldest vine in the world is housed in Maribor in Slovenia. This is in part of the price of the honey man who heads a wine factory in the eastern part of the country. And it is over 400 years old. The structure it's attached to is fittingly called the old vine house. Zanatovka is the varietal, they still make wine from it to this day. I love the Wikipedia entry ends with this note from the Daily Telegraph, which is, you know, an appropriately, you know, pithy English, you know, rag.

the wine from the oldest vine in the world virtually undrinkable um but at any rate um you know uh it is a huge part of um you know this local mythology um of uh slovene wine um and you know again um you know there's this broader sense in which i think you know people underestimate um the depth of uh tradition uh for the sake of winemaking uh in this corner of the world um you know it is uh winemaking that is wine drinking um equally as important to these cultures as it is in western europe it's just they haven't benefited from you know the same kind of exposure international exposure that the countries of uh western europe have benefited from so you know it's not to say that people love wine any less in slovenia than they do in france you know per se uh slovenia just had a very different um you know um experience um in the modern era um you know uh vis-a-vis export market and vis-a-vis you know the extent to which um you know international consumers like us in the united states were um exposed to its wine so um without further ado let's kind of talk over um you know the major growing regions uh throughout uh slovenia and uh then we'll get into our first uh pair of wines a double dose of pinot grigio um as it were so i'm going to share a winemaking map uh of slovenia um you saw i've got a sense of you know where we are we're in the middle of the world we're in the middle of the world we're in the middle of the um you know the former yugoslavia we are um buttressed by italy uh to the west austria to the north and hungary To the north and then Croatia, and the other former Yugoslav republics to the south, the Adriatic, uh, to the west as well, and the three major regions, um, in uh Slovenia, you have uh, and and you know for me, you know obviously this is a different alphabet, you know this is not a Latin alphabet, um, and you know the the linguistic constructions are maddening, I apologize again to all the Slovene Slovenians in the audience, um, because I'm sure that you know your ears are ringing uh as we speak. But Promorska is the western region, uh, it encompasses most importantly, uh, Goriška Brda, um, which is just over, uh, the hills, actually means.

Hills, Birda um, from uh Italy, and we'll talk that over for the sake of these wines in just a moment. Um, and then the other you know, a cheap region, Podrovska, um, and uh, that is adjacent to Austria and Hungary. Um, it should be said that Pederska, the one making almost entirely from white varietals, Promorska is a bit more of a mixed bag, and then you have uh Pozavska, um, to the south here, closer to Croatia, um, and it's the rare region where uh red wines rival um whites um in um capacity in popularity, um, and the blah Frankish we're drinking uh today will be from this region. Um, just to kind of untangle this a bit, um, it should be said that you Know a Pedrovska, um, the name there comes from the Trinidadian name of the wine, which is the red wine, which is the red wine, which is the Trinidadian name of the wine, which is the red wine.

Uh, it essentially means the banks of the Drava river, which itself is a tributary the Danube um, and then uh, the uh Pozavska region named after the Sava river um, the other most important river uh, slicing its way through Slovenia, which is yet another tributary of the mighty Danube uh, flowing uh from west to east um, across uh eastern Europe terminating um in the Black Sea eventually um, but um, we're going to start um, in uh Birda, which is this beautiful Little, uh, yellow region, uh, here now it should be said that for the sake of each of these flights we're kind of juxtaposing a wine from, uh, the western part of Slovenia which is a more kind of Italian-influenced region and a wine from the more eastern, uh, extreme which is the more kind of Germanic-Austrian-Hungarian influenced, uh, region of, uh, Slovenia.

But we begin um, uh, with a Pinot Grigio, uh, from Moba, um, and we are in, uh, Bioda here. I'm gonna, uh, lay the scene and you can start with the Pinot Grigio, um, but I'm gonna stop looking at my, you know, preposterously long Samsonish locks and stare at the beautiful Slovenian countryside. um you know uh thank you um again uh to alicia for um the photos she shared with us it's a picture that she took on her vacation uh we are all desperately jealous at the moment this is a view um from the vineyards in mobia um over to um uh the italian side of the border and i'm gonna quote um here uh briefly uh from uh um the asian um the asian border and uh an article about all this.

You have a region here that's been historically disputed between both places, but has emerged into the modern era, you know, very poetically, and it should be said that, you know, there is, you know, much shared between both regions in terms of grapes, in terms of winemaking traditions, and in shared culture. And I really love this note. It says, after a hundred years of bitterly divisive conflict, Friuli and Slovenia again gravitate toward each other. Is it a paradox, or perhaps a valuable lesson? Common heritage is the antidote to political poison. In a time of division and alienation, wine culture too straddles arbitrary borders. Cohabitation evolves into integration, and neighbors end up becoming brothers. In Colio, wine is not just a drink, it is a powerfully unifying cultural force.

And, you know, that is very true on both sides of the border here. So on the Slovenian side, you have Birda, which means hills. On the Italian side, you have Colio, which equally means, wait for it, hills. It's called the Tuscany of Slovenia on the Birdan side. The major grapes are Robola, which we'll get to in a second, and Pinot Grigio. But we are not dealing with the Pinot Grigio of popular mass-marketed imagination here. This is, you know, the Pinot Grigio that we think of. It is anodyne. It is mass-produced. It is harvested very early, and it's pressed right off the skins. So you get something like this, which, you know, for the sake of Santa Maria Margarita, which, you know, God bless them, is a hugely successful brand.

And, you know, the winemakers there, the brand ambassadors, make more money than I could ever hope to. But, you know, the wine itself is, you know, thin, relatively insipid. You know, it is the ubiquitous, you know, soft drink of wines that is, you know, reliably one way, you know, but not necessarily reflective of its point of origin, which just happens to be, you know, it's not necessarily reflective of its point of origin. It's actually the Germanic-speaking region of northern Italy, further to the west here. And you get a sense, you know, just in terms of the color, you know, you know, it couldn't be, you know, much more different from the Pinot Grigios that we are drinking from these other corners of the larger region here.

So, you know, this is your Santa Margarita pressed right off the skins. I have here the wine from Mobia. And this is not a wine that sees skin contact, but it's made slightly more than a year ago. So, you know, it's a wine that's made slightly more oxidative style, aged on the leaves for the better part of 18 months in Barrique, which is a more oxidative process, which gives it this color. It's harvested much riper than the Santa Margarita ever would be. And because of that, it has this kind of, you know, rich golden hue about it. And it's more kind of like, you know, exotic, nutty, almost wildly tropical dimension. Pinot Grigio doesn't want to be a light wine. You know, my favorite example is Pinot Grigio.

It's a wine that's made slightly more oxidative style, aged on the leaves for the and there they call it their red wine. Pinot Grigio on the vine, you know, it looks more red than and ruddy than it does white. This is Pinot Grigio. You know, you should get a sense, you know, at home, if you're making something, you know, that is as crystal clear as the Santa Margaritas of the world, you can tell that, you know, this wine was harvested before it got a chance to get fully ripe because it gets darker after veraison, the grapes do, as it develops more personality in the skin. And so, you know, it's a wine that's made slightly more oxidative and you get a sense that obviously there are no skins in the mix.

Juxtapose that with the Poulos, which itself is a wine from the oldest winery in Slovenia, which hails from Pouljies, which is in the eastern corner of the country. It comes from a cellar that dates back to the 13th century, 1239, the cellars, in this case, date back to. And they're still making wine to this day across a number of different labels. They also made the delightful wine Spritzar, the Tsar of Spritzers, that many of you purchased. And they traditionally leave this wine on the skins for 24 to 36 hours. And this is a huge part of the local drinking culture in Slovenia. This is not, you know, some kind of hipster psalms response to fads. This is a through line, throughout the region, in terms of the way they have always made their wines.

And they did that for a variety of reasons. They did that to give character to their wines. They did that because, you know, for them, eating a whole grape would be much more interesting than just drinking the juice, in the words of one wine maker. And the most interesting thing, some of the most interesting things for them came from the very grape skins, not from the juice itself. So, you know, classically the style was to give, you know, a day or two worth of skin contact. And, you know, you get a sense for the sake of this wine, which is made in a much more modern kind of style. So, it's fermented entirely in stainless steel, you know, from the oldest, you know, continuously operating winery in Slovenia.

But, you know, it has this beautiful pink hue because the Pinot Gris grapes have that gorgeous ruddy tone that you just saw in the vineyard. And it gets this fleshier, more tropical fruitiness that makes you wonder why the hell, you know, the Santa Margaritas of the world aren't using the skins in their wines. And they're doing that because the skins aren't worthwhile because they're harvested so damn early. And they're not taking the care in the vineyard to make the skins, which are the, you know, truest kind of exposure of the grape itself to the elements. You know, they're spraying, they're not working organically, you know, they're not protecting the grapes throughout their life cycle in a way that allows them to give the skins extensive contact with the wines during fermentation.

And then for the sake of producers that want to work in a more non-interventionist kind of method, giving that skin contact, it inures the wine, it protects the wine from its birth. So that in a pre-modern era, when people weren't adding heavy doses of sulfur to their wines, the wine itself was more shelf-stable because it saw a little bit of skin contact. Now, it should be said there are producers latching onto this trend and moving more in that direction in the modern era. But this notion of skin contact for the wines, it existed on both sides of the border, but it was very much a Slovenian, you know, kind of, you know, cultural trope. We've given Josko Gravner, who's a hugely famous winemaker, who revived orange wine, white wine made on the skins in the modern era, by going back to Georgia and bringing their amphora with him to Slovenia and making the wine of his grandfathers.

We've given him credit, you know, for boosting, you know, the orange wine kind of movement and revitalizing the movement in the modern era. But Gravner, his family's Slovenian. They speak Slovenian at home. He just ended up on the Italian side of the border. So, you know, in as much as we're celebrating Friuli and its tradition of orange wine making, we are really celebrating the Friuli slash Slovenia. We are really celebrating Colio and Birda, which both mean hills, but just ended up on different sides of an arbitrary political line by accident of world wars and, you know, intervention of, you know, dark political forces. Without further ado, though, what do you have for us from the commentariat? Yeah, so there's just a lot of questions about the color of wine.

If you could go over how the tint in the Poulos compares and contrasts to the Movia. Yeah, so different winemaking regimes. So I think, you know, the color should be said the color of the Movia. This is the Poulos, but the color of the Movia is all about oxidation during winemaking. So oxidation tends to happen more in natural, you know, containers than it does in stainless steel, which is, you know, you know, is oxygen, you know, in transmissive, you know, where, you know, wood is full of pores that allow oxygen access to the wine during fermentation. And you get a browning of the wine through the action of oxygen. And it should be said that this bottle was opened earlier in the week.

And this wine is, you know, darker in hue than it was when I first opened that. And that's because, you know, Movia tends to treat their wines with smaller doses of sulfur than Poulos does. So the Poulos wine is made in what's called a more reductive manner. Reduction. Reductive refers to a wine that's made in the absence of oxygen. You think about, you know, reductive as the opposite of oxidative. And that explains the color. The color of the Poulos is all down to the red tones in Pinot Grigio. We need to think of Pinot as a single grape varietal. And all the iterates, Noir, Meunier, Grigio, Blanc, as, you know, just very subtly different clones of that one grape. You know, much in the way that Pinot Grigio is a single grape variety.

You know, much in the way that Pinot Grigio is a single grape variety. You know, much in the way that you know, a Grenache and other ancient varietals have different, you know, expressions of Pinot, the same way. Pinot Grigio is really, you know, it's not a gray grape. It is a very light pink grape. And in this corner of the world, they lean into that. They embrace that. They say, you know, don't stop Pinot Grigio from being Pinot Grigio. Let's let it be its maximalist self. You know, let's find out what these skins have to offer. And I do really love, so there's another quote, here, and this comes from a wonderful book called The Amber Revolution. I highly recommend it to you all, and I'll make sure to pass around a link to buy it in our recap.

But Simon Wolfe, a tremendous journalist, he said, just like great Barolo, truly great orange wines, like the ones recommended here, have tension, lift, and power. In a world full of blandness and uniformity, they are less the emperor's new clothes, more the adventurer's new playground. And I really do feel that way. I think, you know, orange wine gets wrapped up in these, you know, hipster psalm clichés, and people start to roll their eyes, especially people who, you know, are schooled in the classic regions of the world where, you know, this skin contact happened, but people never talked about it. And, you know, the wines were never, you know, unfiltered or funky or tannic for the sake of what's God forbid, you know. And I think it seems threatening to a lot of people.

But, you know, for me, it's like having a whole new, you know, whole new array of paints. You know, in blue ocean theory, it's blue ocean. You know, it is, you know, this wonderful, vast new playground, this whole new sandbox for people to play with. And, you know, I find that when you're making wine responsibly in the vineyard, you know, very often there are a lot of different ways that you can work with it in the cellar. The same ingredients, just like you get great produce, you can work with it in a lot of different ways. And, you know, I think you can make an interesting and compelling wine that's directly pressed off the skins. You can make a really fascinating wine, you know, that is raised on the skins for various amounts of time.

And, you know, I don't think that's bad. I think that's with us to stay. And I think we should all be grateful as wine drinkers for it. Zoe, what else do you have for us? And does the amount of skin contact vary from different regions in Slovenia? It does. The extent of it varies to some extent. The way they do it varies. You know, so in a more modern context, you would de-stem the grapes and, you know, press them very gently. In an ancient context, you would stomp everything by your feet. And that would be a very aggressive means of extraction. And, you know, that would give you kind of, you know, coarser tannins than you'd be, you know, want to end up with if you were kind of, you know, using your feet.

And then, you know, the question of vessel to age varies quite a bit. And, you know, this is an orange wine, and this is an orange wine. They taste very different. You know, this has much more flavor. You know, this has much more of a kind of a pure kind of fruity floral dimension. And that's because it's aged and stainless and made, you know, in the absence of that oxygen transfer. And then, you know, this is a much more kind of low-intervention wine made in a more traditional manner, aged in oak. And because of that, it tastes a very different way. Now, this doesn't see any skin contact, or at least, you know, according to the text sheet, it doesn't. I would be shocked if it didn't see a few hours.

You know, but I think in terms of the difference between these two wines, you know, the skin contact is one variable, but, you know, the wine-making process in terms of the choice of vessel and in terms of the amount of oxygen that we're allowing during wine making is another variable that's really, you know, coloring things and affecting things. And is this specific for Pinot Grigio as a whole through different countries, not just within different regions within Slovenia? In terms of the use of wine on the skin? Sorry? Just using skin contact with Pinot Grigio. I think more and more people are starting to do that. Pinot Gris is a fascinating grape. Obviously, it has its roots in France. It shows up throughout Europe because, you know, it's a very ancient grape, Pinot.

And you have Cistercian monks, you know, the church was really the major, you know, winemaking force and the major commercial force for the sake of trading wine in, you know, the Middle Ages. And in the early modern era, you know, so you have monks taking cuttings from one monastery to another. And I think people travel a lot more than, you know, we commonly imagine now. And so Pinot and its kind of various iterations traveled widely. It figures prominently, you know, relatively, you know, early in the course of kind of recorded history about winemaking and Hungary. But it really gains its, you know, major toehold in Alsace. Where it's one of four major grapes there. And, you know, in Alsace, you do see producers leaving on the skins, but it wouldn't be, you know, quite as much skin contact as you would see in Northern Italy and Slovenia.

It would be, you know, considerably less skin contact, you know, just be a few hours. And again, it would just be to give that texture. And skin contact is a lot of things. It gives texture, it dampens the acidity. So there's a lot of the same in grape skins. It tends to, you know, make the wines less overbearingly acidic. And then you get all of these, you know, chemical constituents, phenols, terpenes, etc. that are, that live in the skins that you want to extract, especially from aromatic grapes. So, you know, in wines like Riesling, Gewurztraminer, very aromatic. Malvasi, which figures in parts of Slovenia. You see people, you know, uniformly giving a few hours of skin contact and just not talking about it.

So I think it's one of those things that happens a lot more, even with quote unquote white wines. I think it's one of those things that people don't really talk about. It's just become, you know, a marketing vehicle now. And it just so happens that at this point in the universe, they, you know, push it a little further. And that's, you know, where you get the color, and that's where you get, you know, a distinct, you know, kind of style. In Northern Italy, called Romato, which comes from the, you know, Italian word for auburn or copper. And in Slovenia, it's just Sivipino. That's just kind of how they work with Pinot Grigio. And, you know, often you have people, you know, making wines both ways.

And that's the case with Stekar, which is a great kind of segue, because Stekar makes a line of wines that are pressed directly off the skins. And then he makes a line of wines that see extensive skin contact. And we're working with Rivola here. And we are going back to Birta. And I'm going to show you another map, because I find maps hugely educational. This is a really fascinating one. So we can see here the border of Slovenia as it existed prior to World War I. And that's this dotted line here. And number six is Birta. And you have these regions, three, four, five, which are in modern-day Italy. So the Italians, you know, won land as a result of the First World War.

And Slovenians lost some as part of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, which was one of the belligerent powers that lost the war. After losing in Archduke. And so this little thin sliver of territory was lost. You know, there are a lot of Slovenes in the mix here, you know, culturally. You know, they just ended up on the Italian side of the border, it should be said. And, you know, in the region today, there's no border wall to speak of. There are a few, you know, granite, you know, cement markers. But there's no real sign of where Slovenia ends and Italy begins. And there are winemakers on both sides of the border now talking about having a designation of origin that envelops both regions across national borders in a way that I think is really fun to think about.

Now, that'll probably never happen for a variety of economic reasons, mostly because grapes are a lot cheaper on the Slovenian side than they are on the Italian side. But, you know, people are, you know, beginning to recognize more the shared cultural history. And the winemakers can't help but recognize that from one place to the next. So for the sake of this particular offering, we're dealing with a grape called Ribola. In Friuli, on the Italian side of the border, they call this Ribola gialla. On the Slovene side, it is Ribola. It should be said that there are a lot of different clones of Ribola. Ribola itself is a very ancient grape that originated in this region. And they work with a lot of different subtypes. This, you know, isn't hugely informative.

But I'll share a little bit of what we're doing. So, that's one of the different subtypes of Ribola. I just couldn't not share this. Most of the producers in the region today work with golden or yellow Ribola. So, that's the one we're dealing with here today. But I want to celebrate crazy Ribola. I want to, you know, raise the roof for crazy Ribola. I want that to be my Slovenian punk band name. You know, I want to see that on bumper stickers. Crazy Ribola, truly crazy. For the sake of the different size of individual grapes. And that happens because it has a lot of different types. flowers very unevenly. And you see the development of these crazy looking, you know, great clusters thereafter.

And I kind of want to find a winemaker working with, you know, single clone crazy Ravula, just so that we can get that on the wine list. Because, you know, sometimes, you know, honestly, we just do it for the name. And I think it's, you know, important to, you know, celebrate that. But Ravula is a grape that requires, you know, it loves the sun, it requires south-facing sites. There's quite a bit of calcareous soils. So this is, you know, for those soil nerds in the mix, you know, this is the Pee Wee's Playhouse Limestone Alert. So on the Slovenian side, they call the relevant soil in Birda, Opoka. It is heavily laden with, you know, kind of calcium. In France, they would call it a marl. So it's basically a calcium limestone heavy mudstone.

But it's very friable, which means it breaks up very readily. And it is, you know, well draining enough to keep the grape vines, keep their feet dry, but water attentive enough to provide sufficient hydration to the vines. And that's always a sweet spot that we're seeking. And that's something that, you know, these calcareous soils do really beautifully. And Ravula really thrives on them. It also tends to give wines that have thicker skins and higher acid. And I think you get a sense of that for the sake of the Štekar here. This is a wine that's aged in ancient Acacia. We talked about Acacia before as having, you know, bigger pores than oak. So you get more of that oxidation in Acacia barrels than you do in some others.

This sees a full two weeks on the skins in those Acacia barrels. And, you know, a beautiful hue to this one. And, you know, what I've read from a lot of commentators, Ravula is kind of having a moment a little bit now, and you have people on both sides of the border, you know, Grabner in particular stopped making wine from other white grapes on the Friulian side because he said that Ravula is our noble varietal. And, you know, he wants to celebrate it as such and doesn't want to work with anything else. And Shtekar and others, you know, really have started to champion it as their noble white grape. What I love about it is the fruit tones, you know, you get this like overripe, you know, kind of almost like brown apples kind of skin thing happening, but this delicate plurality and then this like, you know, thumping base tone, you know, this gripping structure as well, you know, and it has, you know, this equal parts like cafeteria, you know, kind of mock cinnamon applesauce moment thing happening, you know, but also something, you know, a little more, you know, rustic and, you know, kind of, you know, savage in its own way. But, you know, texturally, really dynamic. And I do love that about these wines. I do love that about the element of skin contact is the way these wines resonate on the palate in a way that's very different than white wine that is pressed directly off the skins. And then this one is a huge crush object. This comes from an adorable young winemaker, a gentleman at Matic. His name is Matija Zerzak. He is in Slovenian, blah blah blah. You know, I would say he's щоdnally dazzling. Teens ready to smile into aastedão. Oh, oh, yeah, that's, that's really cool, too.

Podcasts online, we always get some great questions. And of course, this is where we can get some sleep hours, right? Yeah, take the time to stay in the office. Yeah, we still can. Yeah, come in. Okay. That's. Okay. That's. And clay vessels. 200 plus days on the fucking skins. What I love about this wine is the purity of it. It still tastes like Riesling. Aging of wine on the skins, you know, as fun as it is, tends to, in my mind, you know, very often kind of run roughshod over varietal characters. So sometimes it's easier to see, you know, it's easier to pinpoint, you know, the character of the grape when it's pressed directly off the skins.

You know, whereas if it sees that longer elevage, that longer skin time, you know, skin contact time, you know, sometimes, you know, the grape itself gets a bit obscured. What I love about this wine tastes like Riesling, you know, and, you know, for something that spends 200 plus days on the skins, it's wonderfully delicate. And, you know, that gives you this further sense that, you know, this notion of giving something, you know, skin contact, it's not, there's no linearity to it. And they've done, or, you know, some people who do such research have done, you know, investigation and found that, you know, at some point, if you leave a wine in oak, for instance, or if you leave a wine on the skins, there's this, you know, point at which the perception of tannins starts to diminish, because tannins are these long chain polymers, and they get less reactive as they get longer.

So as they link one to the next, as the tannins continue to polymerize, they are less reactive for us. So we experience the astringency, less as they continue to bind. You know, so the experience of astringency in the wine, it occupies this kind of curve. So, you know, after, you know, a few weeks, a few months, it's at its apex, and then it starts to diminish again. And you get this resolution, this denouement of sorts, you know, that I find hugely, hugely fascinating. And I think that is happening for the sake of this wine. And then, you know, let's talk about the label. It's fucking awesome. You know, I can't decide whether we're dealing with, like, you know, Romans or ancient Egyptians, or a, like an Osiris, you know, you know, kind of motif here.

But, you know, I dig it. I'm into it. You know, whoever did the label artwork, you know, good on you. You know, it's just, you know, a party in a glass. So do we have further questions about this duo of wines? Yeah, absolutely. Could you talk a little bit about Welsh Riesling as a varietal, and how it compares and contrasts to Riesling, or if it's closer to the Pinot Gris that we had earlier? So, Welsh Riesling, confusingly, not related to Riesling itself. They have a different name for Welsh Riesling in Slovenia. Historically, Welsh Riesling was one of the most widely planted white grapes in Slovenia, and it accounted for a lot of Slovenian bulk wine. In Slovenia, they call Riesling that we know, you know, as the Madonna share a single name entity Riesling, Rinski Riesling.

Rinski, being a favorite of Zoe and I's, Rinski is just a more fun way to say Rhine. You know, why say Rhine when you can say Rinski? And refers to the Ganges of Germany, refers to the sacred river of Germany, the Rhine, along whose banks the very great Riesling developed. And you see that with a lot of different grapes across the winemaking pantheon. So on some parts of the world, they call Riesling Johannesburger, because Johannesburg is one of the most famous Riesling vineyards. In some parts of the world, they call Syrah Hermitage for the same reason. You know, grapes as they, you know, travel, as they evolve, tend to pick up a lot of different synonyms. Welsh Riesling, you know, has some of the characteristics of Riesling, has some of the same flavor profiles, but genetically distinct.

It was widely planted throughout Slovenia, and it went into bulk wine, but its fortunes have receded in the modern era. It was most predominantly, in the region that we're considering at the moment, for the sake of this Riesling, in the east, kind of like that northeastern quadrant in Primorka. But it is a very important part of the drinking culture in Austria as well. And it's an interesting grape. You know, I'm not; I haven't tried a ton of Welsh Rieslings, you know, recently. So I couldn't honestly give you a a very learned sense. You know, in terms of, you know, its aromatic profile, you know, so forth, you know, where, you know, the Welsh Rieslings from Podorovska differ from, you know, the Welsh Rieslings of Austria, you know, but, you know, in my mind, and it tends not to have, you know, the same piercing acidity that Riesling does, it lends itself to wines that have a little more breadth to them, and, you know, are higher yielding, and a little less finicky, than Riesling can be in terms of the kind of, you know, poor soils that it's liked. But Welsh Riesling, a very important part of the Slovenian, you know, historically, wine, you know, kind of landscape. What else you got, Sel? Has the quality of viticulture improved since Slovenia had its independence in 1991? Hugely. Great question. So, you know, again, the communists enforced collectivization throughout their empire. So, you know, and it should be said that Yugoslavia, the former Yugoslavia, has a very fascinating history vis-à-vis communism. So, you know, you can say, you can lump Yugoslavia in with the eastern bloc, you can say it was behind the eastern, eastern, you can say it was behind the, quote, unquote, iron curtain.

You have to be careful about how you qualify that, because Tito, everyone's, you know, kind of most reviled, you know, communist era Yugoslav dictator, had a falling out with Stalin in 1948-1949, and Yugoslavia left the Soviet bloc. So Yugoslavia, throughout its history until 1991 and its dissolution, was not allied with the Soviet Union as a member state, as a partner state. Tito promoted this kind of almost like North Korean-like brand of self-sufficiency, and Slovenia was a very important source of wine. To this day, the Slovenians make about 80% of the wine they drink domestically. Slovenia, big ups, is also the fourth highest per capita consumer of wine in the world. Good on you, Slovenians. And, you know, sadly, though, you know, under communist rule, there was collectivization of agriculture so that it was actually illegal to bottle your own wine and sell it. Now, there were exemptions for wine for personal use, so you could make a so in, like, Birda, you know, like, you know, Steckhardt, his forefathers, who were also grape growers, they would sell to the, they would sell whole grapes, the Italian side, and you could make extra money that way, you know, outside of the state, you know, kind of sanctioned trade. But, you know, you couldn't make wine on any kind of commercial scale, which is why in a lot of these parts of, you know, the former communist bloc, a lot of older people, they're skeptical of wine in a bottle. For them, wine is a wine in a bottle. It's a wine in a bottle. It's a wine in a bottle. It's like, you know, the stuff that these collective co-ops are making.

It's the stuff you don't want to drink, you know, that comes from these, you know, kind of industrial, you know, kind of chemically kind of managed vineyards. The good shit for them, you know, came in glass demijohns, it came in, you know, you know, humble, reusable bottles and stuff like that, you know, but that has changed irrevocably since the fall of communism. And, you know, this tradition of people making wine on a small scale in Slovenia has come back, you know, with a vengeance. And I love that about, you know, Slovenia, Croatia, Georgia, in particular, you know, throughout Central and Eastern Europe, is that, you know, the Soviets, try as they might, couldn't, you know, run roughshod over something that was inherent in the culture, you know, that was this celebration of wine on a small scale as a part of a life well lived.

People continue to do that. You know, people continue to maintain those traditions and work with grapes like Ravola, which is almost entirely eradicated under the communists, for the sake of more international varietals. And, you know, they were just waiting for that, you know, kind of oppressive totalitarian yoke to be lifted until they can revive on those traditions. And Slovenia has been able to revive them more than any other, really than any of the other Central and Eastern European republics, because of its, You know, kind of unique position historically, and gee, rapidly could you talk a little bit more about the culture during the communist regime like where certain regions um like handed over different varietals and to talk about like the efficiency and how bulk wine not necessarily created the co-op history there but just about how they like separated everything out it was um there was just no incentive to make good wine so people were paid um you know uh by um you know the the ton for their grapes um they were encouraged to plant um the most productive grapes which you know historically are not you know the the varietals that tend to produce the best tasting wines um and uh you know um so you know they're and then on top of that they were um you know legally um you know kind of created forbidden from privatizing, you know, so this, the communists created an environment in which it was impossible to make small scale artisanal worthwhile wine, you know, and, and, you know, that's, that's not a, you know, ideological, you know, take on, you know, state sponsored socialism.

That's like an, that's like a wine person's take on what needs to happen on the ground to make good wine. You know, there was zero incentive to make good wine. And on top of that, you know, there were legal strictures against, you know, working on a smaller scale to make artisanal products and sell them yourself because the whole system, you know, functioned collectively, you know, typically you had small tenant farmers that were legally required to sell to a co-op at legally mandated rates across the board. And it didn't matter if your fruit was better than your neighbors. It didn't matter if your vineyard was Grand Cru and his was, you know, down in the floodplains, everything fetched the same price. And there was rampant abuse of the system and rampant corruption because of that.

You know, so, you know, I've heard producers in Eastern Europe say that communism was worse than phylloxera. You know, and phylloxera was, you know, it killed all the vines. So, you know, it, you know, this, this way of structuring, you know, the agricultural sector, it eradicated any incentive for people to work in an environmentally sustainable way and work in a, you know, really individualized, quality conscious, you know, kind of, kind of manner. And, you know, that, that sadly is indisputable. And it's one of the reasons that state-sponsored socialism, you know, failed. You know, people in places like Slovenia, which is always, Slovenia always kind of kept the rest of the Yugoslavia at an arm's length. And, you know, there's a reason why they were the first to leave.

And, you know, there's a reason why, you know, their, you know, local wine industry has rebounded is because they have these, you know, there's this really strong sense of self, you know, both, you know, culturally, nationally, and in terms of, you know, the winemaking traditions. Great. Is there a technical term for Miller and Dodge for the crazy rubella, if it isn't? No. No, it should be Miller and Dodge. So, Miller and Dodge is a French word for basically uneven flowering. So, basically, if you get grapes that are pollinated unreliably, and typically it happens if there's bad weather during flowering. Flowering is a, you know, your flowers are pollinated, and they develop into embryonic fruit clusters. And if there's bad weather during that period, it's really the most sensitive time during the life of the vines next to harvest.

But I don't know. I don't know if it's like a crazy rubella. I'm sure there's some, you know, fun Slovenian word for it, but I didn't dive deeply enough down that rabbit hole. You have to talk to some, you know, Slovenian winemaking OG. We've got to get to the red wines because I have some wine to disgorge for the sake of our 21st birthday and for the sake of ruining my laptop and embarrassing, you know, everyone watching from home. So, two reds here. And we have a Pinot Noir, which locally they would call a Mowdry Pinot. Mowdry, much like seedy, just means, you know, white or black. This is from Mowbia, again. We were hoping to have them on the program, but sadly, they're on vacation. He is a crazy, crazy cat, Aleš Kriščančić.

He gets a lot of credit as a marketing genius of sorts for kind of showing off his vines. He's championing, you know, this more kind of non-interventionist natural winemaking style in Slovenia. For a lot of people, I think his wines have become, you know, synonymous with, you know, that style of winemaking in the country. It should be said that he's certainly not the only person working that way. And, you know, the wine scene is much more dynamic than just what he has to offer. But he deserves a lot of credit for being, you know, this amazing ambassador for Slovenian wine. There's quite a bit of Pinot Noir in Birda. They also work with, you know, a lot of other wines.

They work with Raposko, which is a grape that appears in, you know, these, you know, more densely tannic wines closer to Istria that are, like, bright and don't necessarily go through malolactic fermentation. You know, we haven't even, you know, for the sake of this lesson, scratched the surface of the diversity of Slovenian wine, which, you know, should tell you something, you know, again, for a country that produces about as much as, you know, Sonoma does. And that is the size of Massachusetts about, you know, really how diverse, you know, this place is and how much there is to celebrate. You know, but we have Modri Pinot and then Blot Frankisch. But, you know, there is Tehran, which is that Raposko I spoke to. There's Pinola and Zoan, which are native grapes closer to the Adriatic.

There's Sipon, which is a Hungarian varietal, otherwise known as Ferment, which famously goes into Tokaj. There's a wine called Bologna. There's a wine called Šibček, which is a co-ferment of red and white varietals, which is kind of like Slovenian Pupenjo. So there's just, like, so much happening here in such a small corner of the world. And, you know, that's really cool. And, you know, the scene hasn't evolved enough that it's overrun with tourists. So, you know, if you're thinking about a wine trip to Burgundy or Bordeaux or, you know, God forbid, Tuscany, just don't fucking go. Don't go there. Go to Slovenia. You will have a way better time. Go to Georgia. You know, you'll have a way better time. You'll actually drink with the winemakers. They will actually be grateful for your visit.

You will not be just another, you know, statistic, you know, for them. You'll not just be another, you know, bank account. You'll not be another, like, token, you know, Brit, German, American. You know, they will deeply be invested in your visit. And they will deeply want to champion their wine culture. You know, my most meaningful experience is as you know. A traveler of the world for wine have been in those places that are, you know, on the littoral. The places that are on the margins, you know. You know, they're not the places that are, you know, hugely lauded, that people always ask for. You know, the more interesting things are always happening on the margins. And, you know, they always tell us more, you know, about what wine has to offer, what life has to offer, what art has to offer than the shit in the center.

That's just a wild tangent. But without further ado. Modri Pinot has some age to it. Four years in oak. None of it new. Blau Frankisch. We're going to run, you know, we should dive deeper into Blau Frankisch. I love Blau Frankisch. So let's, you know, if people want to throw out tasting notes here, if you got both of these wines, let us know how you think they differ. For me, Pinot is, and I said as much in the Blau Frankisch tasting notes, Pinot is sophisticated. It's erudite. It's an aristocrat. You know, it's like the, you know, French, you know, kind of diplomatic official. It's like the Italian or the German, you know, kind of, you know, I don't know, state, you know, consular that comes to Slovenia and, you know, kind of, you know, wants to pretend that, you know, he knows more, is above it all, what have you.

Blau Frankisch, you know, is much more of the earth. It's much more savage. It's much more, you know, dangerous. You know, Blau Frankisch has had a few to drink. You know, the conversation is more lively with Blau Frankisch. You know, it's not concerned, you know, what people think of it. You know, it's alive, as it were. Blau Frankisch, the Blau there refers to blue, refers to darker colored grape. Frankisch itself, you know, comes from this notion of the Frankisch tribes, comes from Charlemagne of the Franks. And in Eastern Europe. There were Hunisch grapes, the Huns' grapes, and there were Frankisch grapes, Charlemagne's, the grapes of the Franks. And we were juxtaposing different traditions here. And Eastern Europe, you know, the noble aristocratic tradition was that Frankisch tradition.

And, you know, the more kind of ignoble kind of, you know, plebeian tradition was that Hunisch, Huns' tradition. So the less noble grapes, the peasants' grapes were considered Hunisch, the noble grapes were considered Frankisch. And that's how we got the blue noble grape that is Blau Frankisch. This one comes from the Southern reaches. I've been completing regional names in Blau Frankisch throughout, you know, Slovenia, throughout this lesson, because they're much more closely aligned than I would like as someone that grew up in the Latin alphabet. But we are in Pozovska here. The winemaker himself, it should be said, these are his family's very vineyards. He was, until very recently, the winemaker at Huls and then established his own label in 2015. And he makes wine in Prodorovska.

His winery is in Prodorovska, but these grapes for the Blau Frankisch are from the banks of the Sava River in Pozovska. And again, you know, we're celebrating the fact that this is a region that produces more red wine. I love how sappy this wine is, how ragingly acidic it is. You know, just how loud it is. You know, it's a big wine. Blau Frankisch ages really beautifully. You know, there's something kind of like resinous, you know, about it in a really brambly, it's like all porous fruit. You know, it's less that, you know, kind of like higher-toned Swab quality you get out of the older Pinot. But it should equally be said that, you know, as of 2013, this is not an inexpensive wine from our store.

And our markup is not, you know, you know, our markup's aggressive because we're a restaurant. You know, that's kind of masquerading as a retail outlet. But, you know, still at like $30 plus bottles for dollars for a 2013 Pinot that's on par with anything you could find in Burgundy. That's pretty good damn value. And, you know, it's hugely elegant as well. But, you know, for me, you know, the tension between these two grapes, and it should be said that Blau Frankisch has been called the Pinot Noir of Eastern Europe. You know, that tension is about something, you know, higher toned. And something that's just, you know, more visceral in my mind in terms of how I juxtapose these. And then equally, you know, something that has a little age to it.

And something that's, you know, a little younger, a little more vibrant for the sake of the Blau Frankisch, which is the 2018 versus the 2013 here. Any takes on the difference between these two or other questions, though, before I embarrass myself by opening this bottle of sparkling wine? No, just I think everyone second you as well with the Blau Frankisch. You know, it's just being very jammy and very fruit-forward and having all of that like generosity in the palate where the Pinot Noir is like a little bit more tart. The Pinot is showing really beautifully. It should be said, like, I don't want to, you know, it's not highfalutin. And even if it does seem more aristocratic, it's worth celebrating as such. You know, it is showing, you know, really, really well.

Yeah. What else you got? Not much. I think I'm just excited to see this experiment of yours. All right. So without further ado, I'm going to make room. This is a wine school first. And we're going to capture this on video. So the wine I am opening is made in the method traditional. So we're going to zoom in on those of you playing along at home. So, we have the bottle open. So this particular wine is called Puro. It's a masterpiece of marketing from Alish, the, you know, quote unquote, wine making, natural wine making genius behind the label here in Móbia. It is a blend of 60% Chardonnay and 40% Rebola, the local varietal. Now, this wine, when it comes to you, it comes packaged on a cone on its head.

And that is because it is unfiltered. So these two grapes are given a day's worth of skin contact. And then the wine itself is aged for the better part of four years in neutral oak. And then the secondary fermentation. So traditionally, Champagne receives its fizz by virtue of an addition of sugar and yeast after a first fermentation that creates a base wine. So here we have the base wine. And then we have additional grape must added. And because the must was untreated, there's, you know, active yeast in the mix as well. So you add a little bit of that must, which has sugar and active yeast, and you get a secondary fermentation. And Alish has gotten good enough at that that he can create a wine that is Champagne-like.

But he does not take the next step, which, you know, throughout Champagne they do, which is dealing with the leftover yeast that remains in the bottle after fermentation. And so it should be said that as a commercial product, almost all wines made in the Champagne method, they are disgorged. So they do the hard work for you. But in this case, this wine is shipped on its neck because it is undiscoraged. And Alish wants you to do the disgorgement yourself. And Alish says about that, that which is hugely impractical, it should be said. He says, we believe that practicality is a factor taken into consideration only with regard to the outside world, never with regard to the inner self or life in general. And he's a biodynamic practitioner.

And, you know, honestly, that sounds like a load of shit to me. You know, it sounds like someone who just wants to watch people like me make total asses of themselves while trying to disgorgge us at home. But I'm going to do it anyway for your entertainment. I have tried this once before to ill effect. It did not go well. I'm hopeful that it goes well this time because I have this very special tool, direct from the winery. I'm forgetting the name of it. I fucking wrote it down. Oh, sorry. This is the Purista. It's a branded Purista from Movia, branded Puro. This is a gift from Michael C. Brady, who is a local OG from Rossum in New York and represents Movia to this very day and a huge help in putting this class together.

And thank you, Michael. But he insisted that I have this very Purista so that I did not make an ass of myself at today's lesson. So you need to watch this at home as I disgorge this bottle. And what should happen, just so you know, is that I should plunge this bottle of wine. And don't worry. I have towels. I should plunge this bottle of wine. And, you know, we have onlookers outside the Today Show window into the water bath. And thereafter, you should get this initial release of sediment. And I was foolish enough to, for the sake of this bottle, set it on the other end. And it should be said that for those of you who purchased this bottle, if you made a similar mistake, Alish recommends that you rest the bottle itself on its side or, sorry, on upside down for a full three days before attempting what I'm about to attempt here.

I did not give it three days. I gave it at least three hours because I wanted you all to benefit. But what should happen here is that I should use my Purista to pry the cork, get an initial explosion. And that is the explosion of wine, including the sediment that has worked its way magically into the neck of the bottle through a process that the French call râmage. I have no idea what it’s called in Slovenian, it should be expelled. And then I should be able to let the wine out of the very water which it currently contains, pour it into my glass and do our customary toast live and in person without despoiling my laptop or my computer. So, without further ado, let's give this a try. Oh, dear God.

Ah, opa. That kind of sort of works. For those of you at home, I managed not to spill on my computer at the very least. And there is at least a half a bottle of wine left in the mix. So thank you all very much for joining us for this particular edition of Stay at Home Wine School. I wanna especially thank all the Slovenians in the mix who put up with my mangled pronunciation of their beautiful language and who accepted me as a cultural ambassador. I hope at the very least you have enjoyed the wines and been inspired to visit this beautiful place. And I love celebrating the way in which these peculiar ways of making wine, these peculiar grapes, this peculiar tradition at all of cultivating the vine on a small scale and making this beverage endure in spite of all the historical forces that are thrown in our way as a species.

And the Slovenians really embody that beautifully. So as always, alone together, cheers, to you all. Pretty damn good, pretty fucking good. Zoe, what do you got? Some questions, not necessarily about Slovenian wine, but we have a lot of people asking about their love for Mary Taylor wines of all different sorts. And if you have any other information, like where else to find the different cuvées that she has out there? So- and or seamless plug, let's bring it all in. Yeah, I think so. I think we're learning more about, you know, different ways that we can, you know, continue to make money as a retail outlet and continue to stock her wines. It seems to be one of those, so we will continue to do that. And we will stock even more of them.

She's not making wine yet in Slovenia. She does, you know, know celebrate you know some of the same kind of off-the-beaten-path um you know kind of corners the world um but you know hasn't you know tried her hand at Slovenian um you know kind of wine making yet um yeah, we'll keep bringing them um and I'll reach out to her if they say they recap tomorrow um and see if um you know if you give us more information about uh where those wines are sold uh nationally through different vendors um and then just another question about the communist leftovers um is Slovenian a different position with using European varietals just due their proximity to the rest of Western Europe or did like these Czech and Slovakian winemakers were they really like forced to rip out their native vines for things like Cabernet and Chardonnay um after the Communist rule yeah, so this uh uh that's a that's a really that's a great question so um uh you know from what I know that and again I'm not you know uh an authority on the wines of these of Eastern Europe it's a a really fascinating um you know emerging market on the international scene and and you know to say emerging you know almost feels insulting um because you know in as much as our world view vis-a-vis wine is very Eurocentric, you know it's Western European centric, and you know in these places people have always been making wine, um, you know it just so happens that they've been making wine their own way with their own grade and they've been making wine in a way that you know, uh, kind of, you know, it's harder, you know, for people schooled in France, Spain, Italy to wrap their wrap their heads around, um, I think Slovenia is somewhat unique for the sake of the Western European varietals for a couple reasons so first and foremost it was, um, one of the more, kind of, um, productive regions, um, for the sake of turning out wine for like within yugoslavia so a lot of the wine that you know was made in yugoslavia was made in slovenia um and so i think it's a it's a it's a it's a it's a it's a it's a it's a it's a um and then um the archduke of or the kind of like emperor of uh austria the austro-hungarian empire um in the mid-19th century um actively promoted the planting of internet like kind of ubiquitously international varietals throughout slovenia in a way that didn't happen in other corners of um the constituent kind of uh yugoslav republics um so that was kind of uniquely um slovenian um and i think it's a i think some of the regions themselves like lend themselves better so like in uh birda they make amazing fucking merlot um uh you know for for whatever reason it just really works well there um uh and actually a lesh from uh morich or from obia rather um makes amazing merlot and he happened to study um you know at at uh petrus um you know on the right bank so you know it's you know there's there's this wonderful kind of um synergy um there but i i don't think that there's quite the level of saturation of um you know ubiquitously international french varietals uh in other yugoslav republics that there is um in slovenia Um, the strongest winemaking traditions outside of Slovenia in the former Yugoslavia would have to be, um, the coast of Croatia, uh, and so in Istra in the Dalmatian coast, but it's hodgepodge of grapes there too, including the ancestor of Zinfandel. So, um, there's a lot of really interesting you know stuff happening there and the other exciting thing, um, for me as a wine drinker is that, you know, we're just starting to understand this stuff internationally, you know, as an international community of nerdy wine drinkers, you know. It's newer, um, and, you know, that's really exciting to me. You can't say that, you know.

People love to poo-poo, you know, wines from emerging regions, whether it's you know parts of the new world that you know have just started working with grapes or parts of the old world that are reviving old traditions. People love to say, 'You can't have a great wine from insert place here,' and it's just not the case. You know, the wine world is is ever expanding; there's more amazing wine drink now than there ever has been, and it doesn't come from, it doesn't all come from you know these parts of the world that you know um have been making wine for or that have been you know successful commercial products at least for decades upon end. It's the fact that you know the emerging regions give you much better value, and you know it's it's a it's a it's a it's a it's a it's a it's a it's a you know they just make life more more interesting than you know the four days of the world.

Can we have a Croatian class, I don't know, like so we totally should um uh actually I think the next um former eastern block country to tackle would be Hungary um for the sake of Tokaj which um in particular is a sweet wine and we haven't really dealt with any sweet wines but Tokaj I love it's my favorite sweet wine in the world um and uh was arguably one of the first um regions in winemaking. World to designate, um, uh, vineyards, um, individual vineyards, um, and, and, to create, um, a designation of origin for its wines, um, at least a century before Bordeaux, uh, did the same. And then, uh, Hungary, into the modern era has like, really interesting mix of grapes, um, for the sake of whites and reds, wines are somewhat widely available, um, Croatia is super cool, um, Romania, um, is a really interesting market, and then you know, obviously we touched upon Georgia already, um, you know, sort of kind of did a Georgian Orange Wine class, I would love to revisit Georgia, um, you know, we could do, you know, multiple weeks worth of Georgian. Content, um, you know the fear there is that you know we're, um, you know getting so niche that people who are participating, um, from you know Victoria, British Columbia for instance can't participate. But, um, you know part of the reason we do this is so that you know uh in Victoria, British Columbia, you know you can go to your local wine merchant and say, 'Do you have any corrosion wine?

Do you have any Slovenian wine?' etc., and you know that that really does start to drive demand. And I think on the retail side, sadly people are pretty unimaginative about what they bring in. And you know to have, um, people to have consumers, um, you know asking for these regions from these countries that um you know are making wine we're drinking you know makes a big difference one question left and i think we're it's gonna be something that we revisit each week but um what wine pairs best with filling out your absentee ballot bill i love that um i think whatever tastes like eroding democratic norms whatever tastes like um you know uh lack of faith in um you know the op you know people's ability to uh value uh you know democratic institutions above uh partisan expediency um at any rate uh filling an absentee ballot should be an act of joy um you know it should be a celebration of you know the fact that uh every person has a vote and that we can still drop it in a ballot box and hopefully trust that it will make it make its way um you know to the polls by election day um although you have like about a week at this rate to pop it in a mailbox before the postal service is overwhelmed but um i think sparkling sparkling wine um you know deserves a place you know i find myself being patriotic i want to you know drink something you know from a state side uh being your own for the sake of submitting my absentee ballot but i haven't thought about that myself uh yet zoe i i do um you know i intend to vote by mail um just like The postal service, because you know, um, you know, Trump and all of his, uh, cronies, um, you know. But I, I see, honestly, I see myself drinking beer while filling out my ballot more than, uh, I see myself drinking wine. I don't know why, um. If I really wanted to get historical, um, I would drink Madeira, um, so I should be said that, you know, most of the major events in our early history as a country, uh, were celebrated with Madeira, um, uh, of any other wine, uh. Maybe I'll maybe I'll do that, um, maybe I'll um, you know, dial up some Baltimore rainwater, um, and you know, cry to myself, uh, while I um, submit my local ballot and realize that, um, you know, I Have a vote in DC but I'm hugely proud of the fact that Donald Trump will get less than 10% of the vote, um, in DC, you know, that is you know what he should get, um, I wish that every you know jurisdiction was like our own also wish that we had congressional and senatorial representation. So, you know, I'll drink my Baltimore rainwater and I'll think about that. And, you know, I will toast to a better world. I will toast to post, you know, November world when, you know, we'll have, you know, someone else occupying 1600 Pennsylvania. So let's toast to that going out. Thank you guys, it's a pleasure as always. Cheers.