Did you know that 600 thousand vines, cultivated in the Vipava soil, will grow in the best French vineyards? That's how much vines the grapevine-growing cooperative from Vrhpolje will export to the most popular wine country… The second biggest buyer of vines is Austria, which is followed by Hungary and Italy. A growing number of vine exports also go to Croatia and Serbia. Interestingly the Italians have increased their orders for the Rebula wine sort by several-fold – our western neighbours use the sort mostly for sparkling wine. At the same time there have been no orders from Slovenia for Rebula.

Next year three million grapevine grafts
"We have produced one million three hundred thousand grapevine grafts this year. 90 percent of it will be exported. We sell very little at home, mostly due to the slow renovation of Slovenia's vineyards. Abroad the crisis years regarding grapevine growing – it was worst between 2005 and 2010, when the production of grafts in the European Union fell by more than half – is over. The orders are rising. Next year we will increase our production even more. We plan to produce around three million grapevine grafts. The largest amount we've ever grafted in our cooperative was in 2004 – around four million. We also have our own nurseries spreading on 10 hectares of land," says Jože Žgur, the head of the grapevine-growing cooperative Trsnica Vrhpolje.