Page 26 - Terčelj, Dušan. 2015. The Culture of Wine in Slovenia. Edited by Aleš Gačnik. University of Primorska Press, Koper.
P. 26
he Culture of Wine in Slovenia
exotic: a French, Australian or New Zealand wine. They all had
an aroma of a different kind of soil.
From an early age, father would take us round winegrowing
areas and wine cellars, teaching us about wine tasting and
drinking. I personally always liked most the smell of wine and
I often competed with my father to see who would be best at
identifying what variety it was. I think this game had been
with us ever since those mysterious test tube days. We did not
visit only Slovene wine cellars, but also those across a large part
of Europe, as well as the best-known museums and historical
sites, which my father could so interestingly include in his story
about wine. This was probably why I chose my profession, only
slightly changing the name of my father’s: from oenologist to
ethnologist was for me just a simple step. And so a few years
ago we started talking about a book which would span our
professions, something to which we could both contribute our
knowledge and which would be more interesting to the reader
than “pure chemistry”. I say a few years ago because this idea
was quite some time maturing.
When my father started writing this book I decided to withdraw
and leave it to him. His erudition, not just in oenology but
also in his second greatest love, history, and his ethnological
knowledge about the subject he is describing was so complex
Sparkling wine at a family celebration of Majda Terčelj’s birthday, 2005. Terčelj family archive.
22
exotic: a French, Australian or New Zealand wine. They all had
an aroma of a different kind of soil.
From an early age, father would take us round winegrowing
areas and wine cellars, teaching us about wine tasting and
drinking. I personally always liked most the smell of wine and
I often competed with my father to see who would be best at
identifying what variety it was. I think this game had been
with us ever since those mysterious test tube days. We did not
visit only Slovene wine cellars, but also those across a large part
of Europe, as well as the best-known museums and historical
sites, which my father could so interestingly include in his story
about wine. This was probably why I chose my profession, only
slightly changing the name of my father’s: from oenologist to
ethnologist was for me just a simple step. And so a few years
ago we started talking about a book which would span our
professions, something to which we could both contribute our
knowledge and which would be more interesting to the reader
than “pure chemistry”. I say a few years ago because this idea
was quite some time maturing.
When my father started writing this book I decided to withdraw
and leave it to him. His erudition, not just in oenology but
also in his second greatest love, history, and his ethnological
knowledge about the subject he is describing was so complex
Sparkling wine at a family celebration of Majda Terčelj’s birthday, 2005. Terčelj family archive.
22
