St. Martin’s Saturday in Ljubljana’s old town core features the ‘Wine Trail in Old Ljubljana’. Visitors can stroll from Knafel’s crossing, over the Pločnik pedestrian area, over the Three Bridges, along Cankar’s Embankment all the way to Shoemaker’s Bridge, tasting the young wine at stalls along the way. The wine-tasting is hosted by 12 restaurants from the centre of Ljubljana in cooperation with more than 25 vineyards from all of the Slovene wine-growing regions.
The ‘Wine Trail in Old Ljubljana’ is the introductory event to the 7th Slovene Wine Festival, which will be held from 18 to 20 November at the Hotel Slon. More than 100 vineyards from all over Slovenia will be represented, as well as vineyards in Croatia, Macedonia and Serbia and Montenegro, and representatives of wine producers from Chile and Spain.
Events celebrating St. Martin’s Saturday will be held all over Slovenia. This is an old folk holiday which marks the end of the season of working in the fields, on which the must is supposed to turn into wine. November 11th is the name day of St. Martin, who according to legend is supposed to have turned water into wine. At this time various celebrations and tasting of young wine are held all over Slovenia, with a lavish spread of roast goose, flat cakes called ‘mlinci’ and stewed red cabbage. Farmers in the Primorska region hold ‘osmicas’, eight-day fetes where in addition to wine they offer home-made specialities such as smoked ham, salami, sausages, cheese, boiled cabbage, turnips and ‘štruklji’ dumplings.
Owing to nature’s exceptional bounty, Slovene wine-growers produce around 100 million litres of wine per year. Slovenia can be divided into three main wine-growing regions, each of which have their particular climate, soil, relief and traditions: the Podravje (Drava river), Posavje (Sava river) and Primorska (coastal) regions. All of Slovenia’s wine growing regions are laced with a network of wine-tourism roads.
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