Mountain mixologist of the Slovenian Alps
“Blonde witch”, like the locals she calls affectionately, unable to walk more than a few steps in the alpine meadows around her home without gathering ingredients. What most of us consider to be simply beautiful to look at – tall grass sprinkled with the color reflections of gentian, plantain and the petals of a woman’s cloak – Tanja Rebolj sees as the key ingredients of medicinal and delicious spirits of her own invention. Slovenians call it 22 types of spirits žganje. But this is not brandy as we all know it.
Stop in any inn, the Slovenian word for a country restaurant (or anyone at home, for that matter), and they will offer you a snob (schnops), strong alcohol distilled from fermented fruit (usually apples) and then flavored with a single ingredient: william or walnut, lemon or honey, blueberries or young spruce tops. My mother-in-law, for example, likes to add sugar and fresh lemon juice lemon, cousin of the Italian limoncello. Homemade schnops with one flavor is so ubiquitous in Slovenia that almost everyone has a relative who makes it. It’s considered not just a welcome drink, but a cure for everything from hangovers to tummy troubles to too-tight leather shoes. (Rub them with brandy!)
But Cvet Gora – a former post office that Reboljeva turned into her home, accommodation and eco-shop with her homemade drinks made from raw materials – prepares brandy differently.
Cvet Gora is in Jezersko, a place that lies high on a mountain pass in the Kamnik-Savinjske Alps. It was the first official “mountain village” in Slovenia, which is connected to a network of settlements across the Alps, which are the centers of sustainable, environmentally friendly mountaineering and hiking. Squeezed to the border with Austria, which is a short walk away, Jezersko began as a stopover for Friuli, the 19th-century equivalent of truck drivers who transported cargo on horse-drawn carts. Today it is a popular destination for hikers, mushroom pickers and cyclists who descend from or to Austria as part of an Alpine loop that offers magnificent views.
As a child, Reboljeva often went to Jezerska for mountain walks (a common Slovenian pastime) and ended up marrying someone who was born and raised there. A decade ago, Reboljeva moved through the ranks of the Slovenian Army as a logistician, but she felt that she was not treated the same as her male colleagues. So she left.
Rebolj was not sure what to do after the war, as he needed a new way out. “My mother-in-law knew about 20 plants that grow here in Jezerski,” she explains, “and she made tea from them. When she died, her family kept asking about her. So I started making tea according to her recipe.” In her desire to establish her own tradition, Reboljeva turned to brandy.
Reboljeva was interested in wild plants and read voraciously about herbology, medicine and botany. Over the past 20 years, she’s earned the title “blonde witch” not only by cooking up “magic potions,” but by doing a magic trick that she can’t really explain, but that happens regularly enough to make her believe she has some special power. “The flowers will call me when they want me to pick them. It may be funny, it may be unusual, but there were situations when I drove to Jezerska and said to myself: ‘Good, I need this plant.’ And the plant would call me. There were places where I felt like I had to stop. I stopped and found a plant.’
The saying goes that you shouldn’t get intoxicated with your own stock, and although Reboljeva tastes her brandy to make sure the preparation is right, she doesn’t drink it. Having spent years developing 22-odd varieties, each based on a traditional home remedy and including many more ingredients than a typical schnapps, it packs a punch. It’s more of a blend than a moonshine maker.
Rebol’s schnops varieties are rooted in both history and science. He reads academic studies on the plants he collects and bases his recipes on naturopathy and herbology as taught by modern experts. Each bottle’s label includes early modern engravings of key flora components and an image from a 17th-century encyclopedia Glory of the Duchy of Carniola Baron Janez Vajkard Valvasor, polyhistorian, who wrote and printed a huge collection of knowledge, legends and folk traditions in Carniola, part of today’s Slovenia. This book mentions sorcery, magic and home remedies and connects her modern potion preparation with the tradition of centuries ago.
Reboljeva started serving her brandy to customers in 2013. When I organize tours, I like to bring guests to Cvet Gora to taste all her creations, with Rebolj narrating while we sip (also on the Atlas Obscura tour I lead “From the forest to the table in Alpine Slovenia”). It’s like listening to the director’s commentary as an extra on a DVD. Her Anti-nerve The (anti-nervous) tincture includes herbs such as chamomile, echinacea, and valerian, which are said to calm and promote sleep. Rebolj developed Hill Blood (Hill Blood) when men complained that she made a brandy that was supposed to be good for so-called “women’s problems” (menstrual pain, menopausal symptoms), but not for men. That’s why she took issue with the brandy, which she jokes is for “male issues,” which she says is “like natural Viagra, but I can’t call it that because I’m going to get sued.”
Is also Winter fairytale (A Winter’s Tale), a drink that somehow tastes exactly like what I imagine a liquefied apple roll would taste like. “I roast the apples, then put in rum and mulled wine, then Christmas spices like cinnamon, anise, nutmeg and cloves. These spices are also said to be good for the stomach and help with digestion. But people really like them because they taste like strudel.” The line-up also includes (roughly translated) Alpine Wound Healer, Memory Eraser, Lake Doctor and Yaga Baba.
The “herbal queen” of her figure, as she describes herself, is Jezerska Pehta (Pehta z Jezerski, filmed after the fictional witch character in the popular Yugoslav film about the shepherd boy Kekc, who is something like the Slovenian Huckleberry Finn). It consists of 102 ingredients, each of which was sought out by Rebolj and combined into a recipe that took eight years to create. “Most years I don’t make it because I only make it when I have all the ingredients,” she says. Jezerska pehta is a linguistic dance of flavors vaguely reminiscent of Jägermeister. Focus and you’ll feel like you can intuitively sense any of its many ingredients.
Reboljeva collects all the ingredients for her žagjes herself, and almost all of them come from a radius of one kilometer from her home. The most famous Slovenian chef, Ana Roš from the Hiša Franko restaurant (in 2017 she was the World Chef of the Year and appeared on Netflix). Chef’s table), promotes a “zero kilometer” policy: it wants all its ingredients to come from less than one kilometer from its restaurant. Reboleva is not dogmatic about this, but she strives for it.
Rebolj took over the national tradition – home-made schnops – and expanded and contracted it at the same time, both in a positive sense. She has stretched the concept of what a brandy can be, transforming it from a simple alcohol with a single aromatic ingredient to a series of complex and subtle recipes. But she also focused on it by making the national tradition hyperlocal, using ingredients found in her backyard.
Currently, the only way to taste her brandy is to go to Jezerska. And by the way, Rebolj accepts apprentices. I have already chosen my room — the one closest to the closet full of winter tales.
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