Back to Slovenia for a long weekend, land of nothing but wine as far as I have written, and happy people drinking it and celebrating with it. Celebrating what? Oh nothing more than their view on the hill, one another, and their fortune in living here. Many of these smiling and sturdy people are staying for the long haul (January 1 2007 = conversion to the Euro). They like the tourists, who are few for now, and the feeling is likewise. But if you have family in Slovenia then you are in for a whole other experience. And if you are hosted by the Slovenian family of my friend Margaret, then you are in for a very long and good ride (see … and a Wedding below). Luckily she has friends who can roll with even the most indigenous of her Slovenian bloodline.
We can talk about the first night when our two cars arrived at the border and the border police refused one of us for not having a passport. Then we can mention the ride over to the other border, which from our view in the rear car looked something like this: first car eases up to open border patrol window, slows to a stop, momentary flashing of brake lights and then 0-10 mph in .01 seconds, us gasping and our car lurching to follow, us seeing a thermos of coffee and cigarettes in the window where the nasty guard is supposed to stand looming, us continuing to glide into second and third gear with no lights or flashings or guns or dogs behind, and then stopping with the first car about 10 miles later at an old train station in the middle of the night to do a spirited dance and boogie celebrating our alleged border jumping. But we won’t mention that, and this blog will be posted long after we have made our return escape. We can also talk about how beautiful our apartment was that night at 2am, seven people comfortably nestled on another hillside filled with wine, and a refrigerator stocked full of the same stuff in bottles.
But when we arrived for breakfast the next morning at 8am at the vineyard of Margaret’s uncle, we had no clue. Or perhaps the skinned goat wrapped in blue plastic next to the unassembled spit and the growing wood fire was our first clue. Second clue might have been the filled white wine pitchers next to the piles of sausages and salami for breakfast. A few were shocked. I was giddy. The morning took off as soon as the third wine glass was emptied, fittingly since the wine we had just drunk was being replaced by the wine we were about the pick. But as I now know, wine doesn’t grow on trees, sweet and lovely white and light purple grapes do. As we were enjoying breakfast with very young and very old family members under the tressle, more and more people had arrived, so that the orchard below had turned into a parking lot around the now be-spitted skinned goat. Then buckets large and small appeared and a wooden press was pulled out of the wine cellar below the house along with massive plastic drums. The oldest women began peeling potatoes and hauling red meat for lunch into the kitchen, and I was given a shot of plum brandy before a large old bucket was slung to my back and everyone walked to the vineyard top about 300 feet up a small hill.
There were about 25 pickers and 6 haulers, and I was the happiest hauler of all time. Tim and I walked next to each other with a vine row between us like a picket fence, 50 pounds of grapes on our backs as we trudged down the uneven land and sidestepped piles of juiceless grape detritus from last year. Waiting for us at the bottom of the hill at that picnic table under the tressle was a clear jug of wine and a few green bottles of sparkling water, and as a hauler emptied the heavy grapes into the red electric mulcher and then into the massive wet drum below, he would turn to face the hill as another hauler would come down the hill, and there would be a meeting at the wine table. One full clear glass of wine per haul became the norm as the sun baked us and the wine sat in the shade. The pickers, roasting in the sun and moving slowly down the hill with their latex gloves and little vine snippers, thought they had the easy job. But as the day wore on, the haulers had less and less ground to cover, thus increasing the frequency of the meetings at the wine table. By noon, there was no need for haulers, the pickers could just empty their buckets into the mulcher and the drum themselves only 20 feet awa from the vineyard base. Good thing too, because the haulers were very happy - four Slovenians, an American and a New Zealander - all sitting at the picnic table, sweaty and reddened, feeling very, very refreshed. 
The process a few feet below at the press was old world. The grapes, once mulched, were poured into a barrel press and capped with a nice sturdy piece of wood which was topped with larger ancient blackened 2X4’s and a car jack all squeezed under the top of a hand-made steel frame. The jack would be cranked and the grapes would be pressed down so that the barrel would bulge and juice would seep out the slats down into a reservoir and drain into a bucket, where a pump would be waiting to send the juice through a hose down into the cellar and into a wooden keg, where it would wait to become wine. Magic. As the new juice makes its way to the keg through the cellar it passes a collection of its juice ancestors’ exploits, including older presses with 100 year old wood, kegs full of hundreds of liters of Chardonnay and Riesling, aluminum kegs with wine ready to drink, empty glasses, half full jugs, blackened wine residue. Among all this are crackers, a radio, a crate of beer, a few books and some dirty ashtrays. As he leaned upon his cane, Margaret’s uncle proudly told us with hand gestures and a smile that this cellar is where he comes to get away from it all. 
The vineyard houses are not real houses, they are like ice fishing shacks times ten, each one called a gorice. They are there to accommodate harvest time living because they hold a large indoor room for eating and a large kitchen for cooking and that’s it, except for the cellars below which range from the cemented dingy fermented-smelling holds to brick-inlaid modern-drained recessed-lighted secret bungalows. But all hold kegs of old wood and fine wine within. And you would be crazy if you didn’t come to your family gorice in the winter, fire up the wooden stove, drink wine and dance with a beautiful woman all day. This is also what Margaret’s uncle did to get away from it all, before he broke his back working and the cane became his constant companion.
When we had finished this plot of land we had another plot of land to sweep about 15 minutes away, a smaller plot on a steeper hill with the rows once more lined up and down but this time we began at the bottom and worked our way to the top. The grapes larger, the stalks heavier, the calls for hauls came quickly. Calls to the other pickers sounded as yodels, responses echoing up the hill in cackles like pig calls or Bavarian beer-laden cheers. We were told that in some gorices the pickers are made to whistle while they worked to keep them from eating the grapes. We were asked to eat them to our content. Sun high and hot, no telling if your stomach pain was muscular or wine-related, the 80 gallon drums were filled three times in less than an hour. The uncle, our host, sat in the shade, pulled up his baseball cap, and thought of dancing with beautiful women as he stared at the grass. 
Another 15 minute ride back to the first gorice and there was a feast waiting in the shade of umbrellas and the tressle. The goat was a shade of its former self, chicken and beef on massive platters, warm noodle soup, and peppers from the garden dotted the parts of the tables not holding jugs of wine and bottles of that lovely sparkling water. Roasted chestnuts in a pot were handed out, picked from the trees above us and warmed on the goat fire. Different wines were carried over to the table, the men worked into the night to squeeze every dram of future wine out of the grapes, and the moon came up slowly in a haze to tell us that perhaps it was time to think about going home. No aching muscles, no aching heads, a few ripped shirts, some sunburned faces, and everything on us covered in dirt and smelling sticky and sweet. Once back at the apartment overlooking the lovely valley and in the distance a humming power plant, I tried to spend as much time outside to catch my breath in the growing wind. Windmills, designed to spin small blocks of wood around to scare away grape-eating birds, could be heard all around the valley like walking ghosts clanging pots in the night. We uncorked one final bottle of Riesling on the wooden benches outside, and listened.
