The Vipava Valley at your fingertips

The Vipava Valley is one of Slovenia’s oldest wine regions and one of its least crowded. Two indigenous grapes, Zelen and Pinela, grow almost nowhere else, and the cellars that make them are small, family-run and usually a few minutes from the house. In late summer and autumn many of them open as osmice, temporary farm taverns where a family serves its own wine, prosciutto and bread for a few weeks a year. There is no better introduction to the valley.

The landscape changes quickly here. The Trnovo Forest plateau rises steeply to the north, with Čaven and Nanos above it; to the south the ground falls away toward the Karst and the Adriatic. The burja, the valley’s famous north-easterly wind, has shaped the stone houses, the vineyards and the cooking alike. Walking and cycling routes begin at the door, and the road cyclists who come in spring do so because the climbs are long and the traffic is thin.

Lijak, twenty-five minutes away, is one of the best-known paragliding launch sites in this part of Europe. The medieval walled town of Vipavski Križ sits on a hill in plain view. The river Vipava rises from a cluster of springs in the town of the same name, and the Hubelj emerges from the rock above Ajdovščina. Gorizia, the Italian border and Trieste are close enough that dinner across the border is an ordinary evening rather than an expedition.