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There’s a table on the edge of a hill in Gornje Cerovo in Slovenia where the vineyards fall away in front of you and keep going until they turn into Italy. On a clear evening you can follow them all the way to a thin silver line of the Adriatic. We sat at that table for hours.
The church of St Nicholas stands right beside it, and its bell rings every quarter hour. There’s a pattern to the tolls, something the farmers once read to know when to come in from the fields. Vesna tried to explain it to me the next day and I still couldn’t line it up. One toll for the quarter.
But then how does three o’clock work, and how did anyone in a vineyard tell the difference? Nobody at that dinner cared. The wine kept coming, the light went soft and gold over the hills, and somewhere around the second course I put my fork down, let out a breath loud enough that the woman beside me laughed, and thought: I could sit here forever.
I want to tell you why that dinner undid me, because the view is only part of it.
By the time we reached wine country, I’d spent some of the trip out of my comfort zone, and sometime a little scared!
That was the design of it. I was in Slovenia on a women’s adventure trip, and the days were built to walk you up to the edge of your fear and ask you to lean in. Cold rivers. High rocks. Cliff edges with a guide counting you down. I spent a lot of those 10 days learning, over and over, how to manage the flutter in my chest and go anyway.
Triglav was the peak of it. I stood at the bottom of the via ferrata, the cabled, exposed stretch that takes you to the summit, and said no because I had reached my maximum capacity. As one of the trip leaders I spent that whole day, and the next, quietly carrying decisions I wasn’t sure I’d gotten right. That day earned a story of its own, and I’ve written it properly here.
By the time we got to the Soča Valley, something had shifted. The fear had turned into something I actually loved. I jumped off a canyon ledge into freezing water and came up grinning. We swam in that impossible turquoise river in our clothes because we hadn’t packed suits and couldn’t bear to miss it. The adrenaline was still there, and it had stopped feeling like a threat.
And then there was Goriška Brda, where nothing was asking anything of me. The hardest thing the region wanted was for me to sit at a table over the vineyards and stay a while. It’s where the whole trip finally let me exhale.
I didn’t plan for that. I don’t think you can. You just drive south out of the Alps, the road flattens, the light changes, and a region hands you exactly the thing you didn’t know you needed.
Goriška Brda sits in the far west of Slovenia, pressed right up against the Italian border. Close enough that we ducked across for gelato one night, which I’ll get to.
It’s the closest thing to Tuscany I’ve found outside of Tuscany, and Slovenians will tell you that themselves. Small stone villages perched on top of little hills. Vineyards rolling away in every direction, undulating down and back up to the next village on the next hilltop. Wine at around €3 a glass that would cost you €12 back home in the States.
The local white is Rebula, and a lot of it here is made with skin contact, which gives it a soft orange color. Light, dry, easy to drink on a hot afternoon. Slovenian wine barely leaves the country. They don’t make enough of it to export, so the only way to drink it is to be here, which is reason enough to come and stay awhile.
You’ll want a car. (Check prices and availability on Discover Cars, who we always use) The region is spread out, and the good bits are the small villages and family wineries scattered through the hills. We got around a fair bit by e-bike too, which turned out to be the best decision of the day.
E-biking is how a lot of people get around Brda, because it’s hilly, and because you can. We joined a half-day tour through our accommodation and rode about 17 miles. We started our tour at their agency in the village of Šmartno, the village used to be fortified as an important settlement on the Venetian – Austrian border ad is probably built on Roman foundations.
The name of Šmartno comes from the St. Martin church, the biggest church in Goriška Brda with a bell tower that used to be once a fortification tower.
Our guide was Petra, who also helped cook us a delicious breakfast each morning at our hotel. Our first stop was at Mejnik, a 321-meter hill above the village of Gonjače, where there’s a lookout tower and a monument to the victims of the Second World War. That’s the photograph everyone takes of Brda, the whole patchwork of vineyards and villages laid out below you, and it earns it.
We rode out along the hill roads to get the high views, then came back down through the valley, in among the vines, which was even better. Petra stopped us at spots along the way to look and to tell us about the region. She works for Vesna, who owns both the tour company and the hotel we were staying in, which is how these things tend to work in Brda. Everyone is connected to everyone.
One thing to know before you get on a bike here. The roads through the vineyards are narrow and they wind. One of the women on our trip came off her bike when a car sat too close on her tail through a bend and rattled her. She was fine, grazed and shaken, back on the bike after a rest. Ride single file, and don’t assume every driver will give you room.
We were all so happy when it came time of our rest break. Lunch was the reason to do the whole ride.
We stopped at Atelier Kramar, a biodynamic winery and bistro in the village of Barbana, and it was a favorite dining experience.
Katja and Matjaž built the place. They were artists first, fell into winemaking, and never really stopped being either. There’s a small gallery of work from around the region, and the plates our food came out on were made by the owners themselves. They work their four and a half hectares of vines with the phases of the moon, no herbicides, and you can taste the care in it.
We sat at a long table outside, under big umbrellas, greenery and vineyard all around us, exactly the shady, unhurried spot you want after a couple of hours on a bike. Mixed cold cuts, homemade salami and pancetta and prosciutto.
Bread so good I kept dipping it in their olive oil, and here’s the thing about Slovenia that I still can’t get over: the gluten free bread is delicious. Every single place. Why can’t America manage that. They made my pasta with rice and it was full of flavor. For dessert, cheese from the Slovenian mountains, cow and sheep, aged in their own cellar. And the wine was fantastic. That Rebula, light and dry and faintly orange.
Every other day of this trip was stacked with hard adventure. Canyoning, rafting, a 12-hour day on Triglav. This day had a bit of adventure in it too, on the bikes. Mostly it was slow. It gave us room to actually taste the food, look at the view, and talk to each other properly while we rode and while we ate. After a week of pushing, that was the medicine.
We stayed at San Martin in Šmartno. It’s family owned and reads more like a bed and breakfast, rooms and apartments spread across the two floors of the family home. Our group was big enough that we had the whole place to ourselves, though anyone can book it by the room.
Vesna is one of the owners, and she was wonderful. Her name means spring in Slovenian, and it fit. Warm, full of stories and recommendations, and the one who quietly organized half of what made the region sing for us. There was a golden retriever named Brick who met the van the moment we pulled in and stayed close the whole stay, and a cat I went down to say good morning to every day.
The owners cooked breakfast every morning and it was the best breakfast of the trip. Some of the best scrambled eggs and prosciutto I’ve ever eaten. Baked goods, fruit, cheeses, fresh coffee and juice, and the view out over the gardens. They make their own Rebula too, and at €10 a bottle, you say yes.
So. That table on the edge of the hill.
The dinner was at Gostilnica na lepem razgledu in Gornje Cerovo, next to the St Nicholas church with its quarter-hour bells. It was a set four-course menu of seasonal Brda cooking, which we weren’t expecting and which threw everyone’s budget out the window. The setting and the wine made up for it and then some.
Herbal frtalja, a coastal omelette that comes with prosciutto and cheese. Homemade pasta. Pork ribs. My gluten free needs were quietly worked around, though I got ice cream for dessert while everyone else had štruklji, which felt like the one time I drew the short straw. The wine started with something sparkling and moved into the dry Rebula the region is known for. There was a red too that Chris loved and I didn’t get to.
Here’s the part I keep coming back to. I don’t know the name of a single wine we drank that night.
For 16 years my job has been to record everything. Names, prices, how we got there, what was on the plate. On this trip I put the notebook down, and at that dinner I was so far inside the moment that I never picked it back up. The owners just brought out what matched each course, and I trusted it, and I sat back and let the wine and the food and the conversation carry me. I regret the missing names a little, as a writer. As a person at that table, I don’t regret it at all.
Partway through, an Italian friend of the family turned up, the way people do when a village sits this close to a border. He’d brought a bottle of his own dessert wine from the 1990s and poured everyone a glass. It was heavy, and it must have spent years in a bourbon barrel, because you could taste it. His English was limited and our Slovenian and Italian were worse, and the conversation worked anyway. That’s the kind of thing travel keeps handing me. A stranger, kind and generous, and a bottle with a story, and none of the words you’d think you need.
That’s when I felt the mountain leave my shoulders.
I’d carried the whole trip into this valley. The fear I’d leaned into all week, the mountain I’d said no on, the leader’s decisions I was still turning over. Somewhere between the sparkling wine and the ’90s bourbon-barrel dessert wine, with the bells going and the light gone gold, I let myself stop. I hadn’t solved any of it. The valley just made it clear there was nothing left to solve that night, and that I was allowed to be here.
I exhaled. I could sit here forever, I thought. It reminded me so much of a farm stay Craig and I once had in Tuscany, the same sinking into a slower rhythm, the same family food and family wine and view that goes on forever. Now I am sure my soul will continue to crave a return to Goriška Brda just like it does Tuscany.
Our final dinner in Slovenia was in the small village of Medana, at Belica, a restaurant with a courtyard terrace under a big overhanging tree strung with fairy lights.
The menu confused all of us and the food came out slowly, which the women on the set four-course meal felt more than I did. The waitress was patient and walked us through it. I had a flank steak salad that arrived, surprisingly, on a single lettuce leaf, and it was delicious, with a creamy potato dish alongside. Belica cooks from recipes handed down by local grandmothers, seasonal and local, a little modern touch on top.
I had a glass of white and a glass of red, both excellent local wines, and both under €4. That number still makes me happy.
We took the long table and talked through our highlights, our surprises, the lessons each of us was carrying home. Then we went back to San Martin and Drea, Ali and I shared a bottle of the hotel’s own Rebula in our room, debriefing the whole trip, getting ready to say goodbye to everyone in the morning. €10 a bottle. How do you say no to that? When in Goriška Brda you simply don’t.
I promised I’d come back to this. That night after the vineyard dinner, someone pointed out that gelato in Italy was 15 minutes away. Christina and Drea gave us the it’s-doable nod, and off we went, because when you’re that close to Italy and the whole group wants gelato, you go.
We landed at Il Gelatiere in Gorizia about five minutes before closing. I’m not sure 15 women walking in while they wiped down the counters was the highlight of their evening, but they served us happily and did their best to translate the flavors. I went simple, choc hazelnut and stracciatella.
The next afternoon, short on time after our bike ride, we skipped the Italy run and got gelato in Šmartno instead, at a little place called Mjrka. I liked the Slovenian one better. Is that allowed to say? Conduct your own gelato tasting experiment while in Goriška Brdaand report back which one you liked better!
Don’t you just love Europe? Popping over to another country for a midnight snack! It blows my Australian mind!
I didn’t visit many wineries. I didn’t learn much about Slovenian wine, and I half wish I had. But I loved that I was here to switch off instead of study.
What I noticed, and wasn’t surprised by, was waking up clear-headed the next morning. That rarely happens to me with American wine, even after a glass, which is why I mostly drink European wine now. I’d love to come back and taste properly, sit with those views, go deeper into it.
What struck me most was how it felt. Slow, quiet, no crowds, and made by families rather than corporations. So many wine regions get big and lose a little of their soul along the way. Here it felt like every bottle carried a story and a person who cared. I didn’t need to tour a dozen cellars to feel that. It was in the €10 Rebula at our hotel and the ’90s dessert wine from a stranger and the plates an artist had made by hand.
The mountain taught me when to stop pushing. Brda showed me what stopping is for.
I was in Slovenia for 10 days on a women’s group trip with Your Limitless Adventures, run by my friend Christina McEvoy. I’ve since become a trip leader with them. That wine country day, the exhale at the end of a hard, beautiful, cracked-open 10 days, is a big part of why I said yes.
If you want to know what a trip like that actually does to a person, here’s the honest, whole-trip account, mishaps and all. And if you’ve read this far, the day on the mountain that I finally set down over that dinner is its own story here.
I’m leading three trips, and I would love to be at the dinner table with you at the end of one of them:
Have you been to Goriška Brda, or is it going on the list. Tell me in the comments. And if you go, drink the Rebula, sit at a table over the vineyards until the bells ring, and don’t you dare take notes.
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