18: Bizeljsko // Turnips, Caves and Wine
The view from the balcony would have been magnificent, had the balcony itself existed in any tangible form. The barrier remained but there was no flooring, just a gaping hole from the window to the ground, a not entirely survivable distance. Still, a gorgeous view, albeit one tempered by health and safety precautions.
I was in Bizeljsko Castle, St Hieronim Chapel to be precise, a 15th-century mansion that had always attracted the lovey-dovey eyes of aristocrats, but today found itself in the care of a charming family committed to making wine. The Klakočar family, to be exact. The morning had been spent exploring their castle and enjoying their wines, the latter in a cellar that could easily have doubled-up as an ideal bomb shelter. The chapel had a real renovation feel to it too, although that was largely forgotten in the face of two hooves dangling from a ceiling. Don’t ask for any more detail than that, because I have none.
The castle was an early-morning distraction from the criminally-unknown main attraction of the midday, also involving wine, also involving cellars, also involving ideal bomb shelters. No hooves through ceilings. Can’t win them all.
Wandering the tunnels of Najger // © Yuri Barron
What do you get if you mix turnips, caves and wines? You get Repnice obviously, old caves dug into flint sand creating the perfect conditions for storing and tasting wine, not to mention storing turnips hundreds of years ago. That's how these things started out, to be clear, as underground storage for turnips. There were no fridges in the olden days, no freezers, and rural families needed somewhere to keep goods temperate, and the sandy soils ticked all the boxes.
The story of the Repnice actually goes back further than that, all the way to the days when the Pannonian Plain was the Pannonian Sea. Millions of years ago. Fast forward a little bit to the death of that sea and you have fine flint sand leftover, quartz sand that sat patiently waiting for farmers in the Bizeljsko region to start digging. That started a couple of hundred years ago.
The Repnice (‘repa’ is Slovenian for ‘turnip’) have been used as wine cellars since the dying days of Yugoslavia, not that the two have any relation to each other. People were looking to store their wine somewhere, and once discovered it was clear that two plus two equals well-kept wine. There are a number of these wine turnip caves across the area, but we were making a beeline for one of the most famous, arguably the most beautiful. Many of the Repnice can make a convincing shout for such an honour, but the fine art-like ceilings of Najger cellar gains it more votes than most.
The quite tremendous ceilings of the Najger repnice // © Yuri Barron
They really are tremendous ceilings. The Pannonian Sea left behind patterns of all kinds, wavy frescoes that reminded me of the bands found on Jupiter, the coolest of all planets. Big J’s bands are caused by the chemical composition and the temperature of the atmospheric gas, but the curious patterns above me were relics of history, left to stew until being unearthed in the late 19th century. We were let in, shown around and treated to some tastings, wine that was excessively strong but pretty damn delightful. I’ll never forget the sound the cork made as it was released from the bottle. Somewhere between a gunshot and a bottle top, only much sweeter.
We wandered the narrow tunnels of the cellars for a while, marvelling at the patterns and letting the wine do its work, exchanging bemused comments about how unknown these natural attractions remain. That isn’t to say they are totally off the beaten track, few things really are, but the dozen or so wine cellars in this part of Slovenia are another notch on the bedpost of the country, another attraction that people say they want but people rarely discover. The flint sand was provided by history, the ingenuity by the locals, the wine by the marriage of the two. We drank red wine, white wine, all the wine.
After taking time to explore the vineyards that surround the cellar, we took our leave, stopping at another vineyard nearby to pick up some plastic bottle schnapps and to take photos of tiny cats, before moving on to some hall of fame art in a hall of fame setting. What better than wine and art?
Wine, turnips and caves, that’s what.
