St. Martin’s Day co-shapes Slovenia as a wine country

St. Martin`s Day or the name day of St. Martin from Tours is the day on which European countries remember the saint who gave his coat to a beggar in order to hide from his poverty. In Slovenia, St. Martin`s Day is celebrated primarily as a wine holiday. Until this day, must is considered to be an impure and sinful new wine that is transformed into real wine through a blessing. The beginnings of the celebration of St. Martin`s Day in Slovenia can be traced back to the period between the 7th and 10th century as well as later on, while the general popularity of St. Martin`s Day can only be seen in the last twenty or thirty years, alongside the general development of the vineyards, winemaking and wine culture in Slovenia.

When talking about St. Martin`s Day, we cannot avoid Slovenian wines. Wine quality of Slovenian wines is marked by three wine-growing regions of Slovenia, which, with its hundreds of years of cultural entanglements, is building its modern recognisability at the junction of the European Alps, the Mediterranean and the Pannonian Plain. It is this very junction that gives special and recognisable character to all of Slovenia`s wines and cuisine. The oldest wine in the world even hails from Maribor and still bears fruit every year. All this is reflected in current Slovenian wines, which are among the best in the world. At this year’s Decanter wine evaluation, one of the most important wine competitions in the world, Slovenian wines received quite a few medals.

Even in the celebration of St. Martin`s day, each of the three Slovenian wine-growing areas (regions of Primorska, Posavje and Podravje) has its own habits that represent the heritage of St. Martin`s Day. Many extraordinary features were preserved; for instance, in the wine-growing region of Primorska, the celebration of St. Martin`s day was connected with the forecasting of the future harvest. Elsewhere, a custom exists that, on this day, wine is blessed but not baptised, since the "baptism of wine" in Slovenia represents a cheeky deed of innkeepers – adding water to wine to increase earnings.

The recognised Slovenian ethnologist, Prof. Dr. Janez Bogataj, says that St. Martin`s day should be an opportunity to become familiarised with the messages of each glass of wine, to hang out with friends and not only for exaggerated drinking. At the same time, Dr. Bogataj establishes that St. Martin`s day is one of the few holidays on which no gifts or other motifs exists, promoted by commercialism; on the contrary, St. Martin`s day still primarily represents a preservation of the heritage of long-held celebrations, when our ancesors celebrated the new wine harvest.