Opok27: On the edge of Slovenia, where a lunch by the vineyard turns into a breakfast

Slovenia is known for its wine routes – and one of them, seemingly running continuously like a green river of vines towards Austria and across the border, crosses the small village of Jedlovnik, where Katja and Gregor Leber-Vračko have opened a boutique homestead, including a wine cellar, four rooms and a restaurant with a view of the tranquil hills and vineyards of the Upper Štajerska.

The young couple worked in Austria and Australia before they first took over the wine-growing duties at Katja’s family farm – Leber-Vračko – in 2014, and in 2018 they returned for good to open last year Opok27, a modern project completely of their own, but still closely connected to the farm.

When you drive from Zgornja Kungota towards the border, you can see two clean-lined wooden buildings at the top of a vine-covered slope and a spacious, sun-drenched terrace in front of them, a terrace of the kind where a lunch turns into a dinner and a dinner eventually turns into – a breakfast, because some guests gladly accept the offer to spend the night in one of the rooms above the restaurant.

Katja, a lawyer who switched career paths, and Gregor, a former football player, do everything themselves in Opok27, which they have built on the foundations of an old wine cellar – he takes care of the vineyards, works in the cellar and the kitchen, and she is the heart and soul of the place who always has a smile for everyone. She is the one who welcomes, serves and prepares breakfasts and cases of wine for the guests, who carry them up the hill towards their cars that come all the way from Ljubljana or Vienna.

From an Austrian winery to their own homestead

Her Maribor accent and her sing-song voice are unmistakable, as is her hair tied into a playful bow as she skilfully moves between the tables with plates in her hand, describing dishes that represent the region and contain local ingredients. The dishes change with the seasons, but one remains a constant from the days when Katja and Gregor worked at the Knappenhof winery in Eichberg in the Austrian Styria – Styrian vitello tonnato.

It is a witty – and exceptionally delicious – dish, which was so popular with the guests at Knappenhof that they simply had to keep it. “Otherwise, there would be a revolt,” Katja laughs. Gregor uses pork instead of veal and smoked trout sauce instead of tuna sauce. Trout roe and pumpkin seed oil give the finishing touches to the dish. After all, this is the heart of Štajerska and pumpkin seed oil production.

In the restaurant they serve exclusively freshwater fish, from trout and zander to sturgeon and redfish, which they mostly get from the Savinja Valley, while the meat plates include everything from local beef and neighbour’s piglets to venison.

Along wine (foot)paths

All that you hear from the terrace is the chirping of birds – and the occasional pop of one of the in-house sparkling wines (pinot noir or dry muscat) or a Firecracker, a green silvaner pet-nat, opened by the in-house sommelier, Jernej. When he is not working at Opok27, he heads wine tours in the surrounding wine cellars.

“I adapt to the guest – if they prefer the classics, I take them to the classics. If they prefer more curious, radical natural winemakers, I take them there,” he explains while pouring one of the last bottles of the macerated 2016 pinot gris. There is no shortage of footpaths between the vineyards, and just two kilometres away lies perhaps the biggest tourist attraction here – the heart among the vineyards owned by the Šerbinek family winery.

Katja serves us a plate of štruklji with seasonal wild garlic and cottage cheese, which her sister Barbara makes at the farm. Like Katja, Barbara also studied law, but returned to the family farm, where she is in charge of dairy products – cheese, cottage cheese and yoghurts, which are used in the kitchen and served for breakfast at Opok27.

And you really don’t want to miss breakfast – creamy yoghurts, natural or fruit, home-made jam, home-made wild garlic pesto, and tiny wheels of fresh cow’s cheese with chives or pumpkin seeds and Firbas’s tick pear juice. Smoked trout is served with citrus fruit chips and trout roe, and quail eggs from the nearby farms are seasoned with pumpkin seed oil.

Mom's wreath and handicraft workshops

The whole family is involved in this very organic business, especially their mother Alenka, who seems to be particularly diligent – while she takes a home-made rhubarb strudel from the oven, she shows us her workshop, situated in the idyllic 300-year-old farm and decorated with old flatirons and chipped pots on the windowsills.

The walls are full of wreaths made of twigs, dried flowers and grain ears, and on the wooden table there are piles of straw, from which Alenka makes organic straws as an alternative to those made of paper, which tend to “blossom” so quickly in the drink. She makes something out of anything she can get her hands on, such as knitted apples, which she “stuffs” with dried peppermint so that they emit a soothing aroma of the countryside for a long time.

She occasionally organises handicraft courses for guests of Opok27 and village housewives, otherwise you can find her in the garden in front of the homestead, a beautiful sun-drenched patch of land where bushes of flowering cosmea mix with beds of lettuce, radishes and potatoes. Part of the produce, especially herbs, ends up in Gregor’s kitchen on a daily basis.