Slovenske Konjice

We came to Slovenske Konjice for the wine and stayed for the monastery, which is more or less the opposite of what I expected. This is a small town wedged between the Dravinja valley and the forested edge of the Pohorje massif, unassuming from the main road, but it turned out to be one of the most rewarding half-days of the whole Štajerska trip.

Slovenia’s Oldest Winery

Zlati Grič, on the edge of town, claims the title of oldest continuously operating winery in Slovenia, with cellars and vineyard traditions tracing back to the monks of Žička Kartuzija. We took the tour more out of curiosity than expectation and ended up in a barrel cellar that smelled overwhelmingly of oak and fermented grape skins, walls lined with dusty bottles going back further than either of us could really process.

The tasting afterward included a Sauvignon and a Rebula that were both sharper and more mineral than I expected from a region I’d underrated before this trip. Lia bought a bottle of Zweigelt, mostly because she liked the label, and it turned out to be one of the better reds we drank in Slovenia.

The Ruins in the Forest

But it was Žička Kartuzija — the Carthusian monastery ruins a few kilometers up into the hills — that stayed with me longest. Founded in 1160-something, it was once the largest Carthusian monastery in Central Europe, and what’s left now is a strange, moving half-ruin: a Baroque church still standing more or less intact, surrounded by the low stone footprints of monks’ individual cells, scattered through quiet forest clearings.

We were nearly alone there on a weekday afternoon, just birdsong and the sound of our own footsteps on gravel paths between the cell foundations. Carthusians lived in near-total silence and solitude, each monk alone in his own small house with a garden, meeting only for prayer — and standing in the ruins of that isolation, in a forest this quiet, I understood the impulse a little better than I expected to.

When to go: September to October for harvest at the wineries, or late spring when the forest around the monastery ruins is at its greenest and the walk up feels less like a chore and more like the point.