Vinska Klet Šuklje is a small family winery with an area of seven hectares of vineyards in Trnovec near Metlika in Bela Krajina, southeastern Slovenia. The first evidence of wine production in the family dates back to 1895, when Matija Šuklje received a loan of 140 gold dinars to plant grafted vines after the devastation caused by phylloxera. Since that time, the tradition of viticulture at the estate has continued from generation to generation.
Today, the winery is run by the sixth and seventh generations of the family: father Jože, his children Matija and Katja, and his French son-in-law Guillaume. While Jože brought traditional winemaking into the modern era in the 1990s, the youngest generation now brings its international experience to the fortunes of the family winery: namely, Katja and Guillaume are both associate professors of viticulture and oenology at the University of Nova Gorica.
After spending five years in South Africa and Australia working in the wine industry as researchers, they returned to Slovenia in 2016 with the idea of putting the Bela Krajina region and Slovenian Blaufränkisch (locally called Modra Frankinja) on the map. Šuklje's philosophy aims to make wines that express their place of provenance, the terroirs of Bela Krajina, on different levels: classic (regional), terroir selection (village) and single vineyard (cru).
Šuklje is one of the founding members of Slovenska Velika Lega, an association of Slovenian winemakers that promotes wines of geographical provenance through a pyramidal approach similar to Šuklje's wine lines (SVL Okoliš, SVL Vas and SVL Lega).
The vineyards have been farmed in a sustainable manner for many years and are currently in official conversion to organic viticulture. Šuklje particularly believes in the Blaufränkisch variety and its potential to become a world-class wine in Bela Krajina.
