Drinking the 2001 Cigoj Cabernet Sauvignon
Take a look in the Wine Bible and you won’t find it. It rates a few sentences on page 427 of The Sotheby’s Wine Encyclopedia (4th edition). There is an entire page devoted to it in The World Atlas of Wine (5th edition). Page 253, in case you have that book committed to memory.
What is it, exactly? It is Slovenia, one of the world’s leading consumers per capita of wine (4th by one recent count). And their wine is fairly obscure by American standards.
We went over to our old friends’ house tonight for some food, some music, and some face time with their new baby. But when we showed up, they sprung a surprise on me: They wanted to open their bottle of 2001 Cigoj Cabernet Sauvignon, which they had brought back from a trip to Slovenia! I was excited because, hey, Slovenian red wine is scarce outside of Slovenia. And this particular winery definitely doesn’t ship to the US, nor do they export their wine through a distributor. It is safe to say that, in the town of Seattle, there was only one bottle of 2001 Cigoj Cabernet Sauvignon available for consumption tonight.
The bottle itself has only one label, and here it is:
Bottle of 2001 Cigoj Cabernet Sauvignon, “product of Slovenia”
My friends were concerned that all of their schlepping around Slovenia might have turned this wine into a big batch of vinegar. Luckily, the wine was good: dry, robust, smoky and woody in a good way, acidic…very nice with some good, spicy food. This food, for example, was a good pairing:
Dinner at our friends’ house
That’s the sort of spread you get at my friends’ house when they say, “Oh yeah, be sure to eat dinner first, we won’t really have much prepared for you to eat.” And that was before dessert.
Back to the wine. Or, more precisely, the wine region. In Slovenia a “suho” wine is a “dry” wine, according to this useful source. You can tell from the label of the 2001 Cigoj (pronounced “Cigoy”) that this wine is a dry red. The very first word on the label is “suho.” As a wine-producing country, Slovenia focuses on white wine varietals more than red. A few common white varietals in Slovenia include:
- Pinot Blanc (called “Beli Pinot” in Slovenia)
- Chardonnay
- Traminer (called “Traminec”)
- Riesling (called “Renski Rizling”)
Cabernet Sauvignon is an uncommon varietal in Slovenia. This link provides more context for geographical locations where this grape grows in the Slovene landscape. The short answer is that Cabernet Sauvignon is grown primarily in the west, near Italy, according to one source. The Cigoj Cabernet Sauvignon comes from the Vipava Valley, one of the few Slovene locations for Cabernet Sauvignon. The venerable Vipava 1894 winery is the biggest winery in this area, and its name lends itself to very vociferous alliteration.
If you are in the market for a Slovene wine, and you should try one sometime because they’re quite interesting, you can find a few Vipava Valley wines through Wine-Searcher.com. Try searching for “vipava” or “rumeni” for a few bottles here and there. As for the 2001 Cigoj, I’d recommend it. But good luck finding a bottle for yourself!