Žive naj vsi narodi
 Ki hrepene dočakat' dan
 Da koder sonce hodi
 Prepir iz sveta bo pregnan
 Da rojak
 Prost bo vsak
 Ne vrag, le sosed bo mejak!

God's blessing on all nations,
 Who long and work for that bright day,
 When o'er earth's habitation
 No war, no strife shall hold its sway;
 Who long to see
 That all men free
 No more shall foes, but neighbors be.

Every Slovenian, young or old, knows these lines. Not only do they form the penultimate stanza of France Prešeren’s most famous poem, Zdravljica (A Toast); they comprise the lyrics of Slovenia’s national anthem.

In its entirety, Prešeren’s poem is an ode to Slovenian ethnic pride and cultural unity. Its thinly veiled nationalism kept it from being published for four years after he wrote it, until 1848 when the Bourgeois Revolution swept through the Austrian Empire like a sudden fever wracking an aging curmudgeon. So I find it noteworthy that Slovenians have made this particular stanza of the poem their national anthem.[1] It’s an outward-looking, palms-up vision of international brotherhood without war or strife between nations that live together as neighbors. It could be the anthem of the European Union; it could be the anthem of the United Nations. So far, it remains just the anthem of Slovenia, a longing for balance between autonomy and accommodation.

In my opening post on why Jennifer and I lived in Slovenia for 7 weeks, I explained that I was seeking new experiments in civil society, as Alexis de Tocqueville did when he visited the young American republic in 1825. Just as de Tocqueville doubted that the equality of condition he saw manifested in the United States would take the same form in the nations of Europe, I doubt that Slovenian civil society today is a paradigm that can be copied everywhere. But, as the torch of progress in managing the interplay of individual and society in human affairs passes out of the bickering, self-centered, venal hands of U.S. leadership, I do believe Slovenia will be among the civil societies that carry the torch forward.

[1] The 1989 Amendments to the Slovenian Constitution refer to the entire poem Zdravljica as the basis for a national anthem. In March 1990, the National Assembly specified that just the seventh stanza, set to the music of Stnako Premrl, would be the national anthem. Slovenians seem satisfied with that focus.

What gives a civil society its identity? By identity, I mean something fundamental and essential, shared by those who belong to that civil society, even though there are all manner of differences and divergences in values and views among its members. Political boundaries are both a consequence of and a contributor to the demarcation of one discernible civil society from its neighbors, but political boundaries don’t necessarily differentiate civil societies. The shifting boundaries of administrative provinces and empires in the centuries before World War 1, or of nation-states in Central Europe after that war, show that political boundaries may or may not align with the kind of coherent social identity Alexis de Tocqueville wrote about when he visited the young American republic in 1825. And was there really just one American civil society back then, or were there perhaps five or seven, or a dozen? Did the American Civil War leave a legacy of two quite distinct civil societies: the states of the former Confederacy versus those that had not seceded? Is there a single civil society in the United States today, encompassing all 50 states, or is American society fracturing again—this time along fissures defined less by geography and more by conflicting ideologies, like the differences that fractured Britain in its Civil War?

Though Jennifer and I did not succeed in visiting every region of Slovenia, I would say Slovenians do share, and participate in, a single, coherent civil society. Yes, there are generational differences; there are differences between those on the political left and the right. The Istrian towns near the Adriatic Sea retain an Italian heritage, just as the farms and vineyards along the northern border have a distinctly Austrian feel. Nevertheless, wherever we traveled inside Slovenia, the people spoke of themselves as Slovenian and spoke of every other part of their country, with affection, as their country. And oh yes, they all spoke Slovenščina—that most difficult and arcane of Slavic tongues—even when they spoke other languages as well—typically at least one or two others fluently, and often several others at a “get by” level.

In my first post reporting on Slovenia, I noted that 83% of Slovenians self-identify as ethnic Slovenes. So ethnic identity could conceivably be central to defining their civil society. However, a number of my Slovenian acquaintances had a parent or grandparent from elsewhere in the Balkans, yet ethnic origins did not appear to make much difference in their sense of Slovenian identity. Instead, I suspect that linguistic identity—being a native speaker of Slovenščina—is more important to their Slovene identity than ancestry is. Much has been written about the central role of the Slovene language in the historic quest for autonomy. The statue that demarcates the center of Ljubljana—perhaps also the cultural center of gravity for all of Slovenia—commemorates not a statesman nor military hero nor mythic patriarch, but a poet, France Prešeren, a nineteenth-century patriot and champion of their language.

I would go so far as to engage the theme of my last two posts, Slovenia’s centuries-long drive to balance autonomy and accommodation, to illuminate what language means to Slovenian identity. Particularly for Slovenians under the age of 40, English is their lingua franca, the language through which they converse with and accommodate the outside world, a world of non-Slovenians. And their command of English is amazing. But I suspect that even the cosmopolitan, globe-trotting youth of Ljubljana will hold onto, and pass on to their children, the speaking (and I hope the writing, as well) of Slovenščina. For it embodies and preserves the essence of Slovenian autonomy.

My previous post examined how Slovenian civil society from the 7th century up to World War II could be understood as an evolving balance between local autonomy and practical accommodation to the political and military power of one or another dominating neighbor. This post will carry that autonomy and accommodation theme up to the present. I’ve described my major written and institutional sources for both posts here. This post in particular also draws heavily on what I heard and observed while talking with individual Slovenians during our 2 months living among them.

World War II: Slovenian Endurance and Resilience

Unlike World War I, when the beautiful Upper Soča Valley was the scene of major offensives and counter-offensives in trench warfare, Slovenian lands were not the site of major World War II battles. Instead, Slovenia and the rest of what had been the Kingdom of Yugoslavia were occupied by Mussolini’s Fascist Army, then Hitler’s Nazis and Hungarian Nazis. During these four years, the historic balancing act between local autonomy and accommodating powerful neighbors was replaced by a more fundamental will to survive through endurance and resilience.

Jennifer has written about the occupiers’ encirclement of Ljubljana with barbed-wire fencing and machine-gun bunkers to control all access to that city. After the war, this 35-km line of encirclement became the Path of Remembrance and Comradeship around the city. The Nazi occupation became increasingly brutal and harsh, as frustrated occupying forces attempted to quell the growing Partisan resistance to occupation.

A complicating factor of this occupation was that even before WWII there were Slovenes who opposed the philosophy and political program of Yugoslav proponents of Communism. This opposition stiffened as Stalin led the Soviet Union deeper into brutal, repressive dictatorship. With the Italian occupation of western Slovene lands in 1940, many of those fiercely opposed to Communism began working with the occupying forces to defeat Communism in Yugoslav territory. In Slovenia, this cooperation evolved into the Slovene Home Guard (also called the White Guard): a collective term for military and paramilitary organizations that collaborated with the Italian Fascists and later the German Nazis to defeat the anti-occupation Partisans. Members of the Home Guard and their supporters were branded as Collaborators, a term that Slovenes who lean to the left still use to refer to those on the political right, whom they blame for the corruption that prevents progress and saps the national treasure. I heard other Slovenes remark that the (Communist) Partisans killed more Slovenes than they did Italian or German occupying forces. A historical fact is that, after the war ended, when British forces repatriated large numbers of the Slovene Home Guard from prisoner-of-war camps in the Carinthian part of Austria, the returning ex-soldiers were massacred by the Yugoslav People’s Army. Mass graves in Slovenia contain the remains of perhaps 100,000 victims[1] of retribution and “political cleansing” after the war ended.

Slovenia in Communist Yugoslavia

I wrote previously about how Slovenia’s 46 years as a state within the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Communist Yugoslavia) provides context for understanding cooperation and competition in Slovenian civil society. On November 29, 1945, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was formally replaced by the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia, a federation of six socialist republics governed by one political party, the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, with Josip Broz (Tito) as undisputed leader. Tito’s push to modernize and industrialize Yugoslavia accelerated the industrialization and economic modernization of Slovenia. These economic forces renewed and invigorated the centuries-old dynamic of pursuing local autonomy while accommodating external overlords. Autonomy was now expressed as “self-management” in Slovenian industry and agriculture and as local management of civil and social affairs, while the central planners in Belgrade, issuing directives for economic development and for the party line in politics and in every aspect of civil society, had to be somehow accommodated.

Especially after Tito’s falling-out with Stalin in 1948 and subsequent positioning of Yugoslavia as a “nonaligned” third option between Western capitalism and Soviet-style economic central planning, Slovenia greatly increased its economic interactions with the liberal democracies of Western Europe. For ordinary Slovenians, travel across the Iron Curtain borders to Italy or Austria became relatively routine—so long as one followed the unwritten rules for what could be taken out or brought back home. Meanwhile, Slovenia’s leaders continued pressing for greater autonomy from Belgrade in matters political and social, as well as economic. While Tito lived, Yugoslavia as a whole, but Slovenia in particular, evolved toward decentralization (more local autonomy, less control from Belgrade) and more freedom (relative to Communist norms) in the arts, higher education, travel and commerce with the West, and even political expression. By the 1980s, even though Slovenia represented less than 10% of Yugoslavia’s population, it was producing a fifth of the nation’s gross domestic product and a fourth of all Yugoslav exports.[2]

After Tito’s death in May 1980, a global recession halted Slovenia’s economic development and unemployment soared. While Slovenian economic modernization had moved it closer to a market-driven economy and cultural pluralism, the rest of the federation had stagnated economically and socially. Slovenian leaders wanted to move toward “market socialism” and at least a limited degree of political pluralism, including competitive elections. The Yugoslav federal leadership, particularly the Serbian Communist Party under the arch-nationalist Slobodan Milošević, wanted stronger central control and Serbian dominance. Slovenian civil society was ready to embrace secession from the federation, in favor of political independence as a sovereign state.

Political Independence—At Last

In January 1987, a group of Slovenian dissident intellectuals published, as a special issue of the journal Novia revja, a set of 16 essays, titled Contributions to the Slovene National Program, calling for democratization in politics and greater autonomy for Slovenia. The journal’s editors were required to defend the publication decision in a public discussion sponsored by the state. Although the editorial board was forced to resign, no public prosecutions occurred. A year later, the political trial of four journalists who had been writing articles critical of the Yugoslav People’s Army catalyzed mass demonstrations that became known as the Slovene Spring.

In September 1989, the Slovenian Assembly passed amendments to the 1974 constitution that included opening elections to parties other than the League of Communists of Yugoslavia and asserting Slovenia’s right to secede from the Yugoslav federation. That December, Slovene police forces thwarted an attempt by Milošević supporters to overthrow the Slovenian leadership. And in January 1990, the League of Communists of Slovenia walked out of the Congress of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, in protest against domination of the congress by Serbian nationalists.

The spring 1990 elections for the Slovenian parliament and the President of Slovenia were opened to opposition parties, and a coalition of dissident democratic parties defeated the former Communist party in the parliamentary elections. In a referendum on independence from Yugoslavia, held on December 23, 1990, 88.5% of Slovenian residents voted in favor of independence (94.8% of votes cast, in a turnout of 93.3% of voters). The Slovenian parliament passed the acts making Slovenia an independent, sovereign state on June 25, 1991.

The Yugoslav People’s Army reacted by mobilizing  units stationed within Slovenia. The army’s leaders anticipated a quick victory leading to reassertion of central authority and an end to Slovenian independence. The military action was indeed brief—it lasted just 10 days—but the outcome was not what the Serbian military leadership expected. During 1989 and early 1990, the Slovenian government had quietly restructured the Tito-era Slovenian Territorial Defense forces to ensure command and control would remain with the Slovenian government. The Yugoslav units that had been deployed, as well as their bases inside Slovenia, were confronted by these Slovenian forces, aided by Slovenian civilian police units. Even Slovenian civilians took impromptu action, such as blockading Yugoslav advances with trucks. Skirmishes and limited, but serious, battles continued for six days. On the evening of July 3, 1991, the Yugoslav People’s Army agreed to a ceasefire and a withdrawal of units to barracks. The Ten Days War was over. Slovenian casualties were 13 killed and 112 wounded; Yugoslav Army casualties were 39 killed and 163 wounded.[3]

On July 7, representatives of Slovenia, Croatia, and Yugoslavia signed the Brioni Accord, under which Slovenia and Croatia postponed independence for three months, while Yugoslavia accepted Slovenian control of Slovenian territory and defense forces. The Republic of Slovenia was formally recognized by the European Community on January 15, 1992, and Slovenia joined the United Nations on May 22, 1992. The fourteen-century pursuit of local autonomy had now evolved into recognition, inside and outside Slovenia, as a sovereign nation, governed as a representative democracy with open, multiparty elections for its parliament and president. But political independence in the midst of a rapidly changing Europe brought new demands for accommodation.

Accommodation within the European Union

In February 1992, less than a year after Slovenia achieved independence, the members of the European Economic Community signed the Treaty on European Union (commonly called the Maastricht Treaty), the first of a series of treaties that restructured that regional economic organization into today’s European Union (EU). In the summer of 1997, Slovenia was included on a list of European countries invited to open talks with the EU about becoming members (accession). However, before an initial association agreement could be reached, Slovenia had to accommodate EU demands for changes to its 1991 constitution and property laws so that non-Slovenes could own real property in Slovenia. At the last minute, the Slovenian government was able to make the required changes, and this new dimension of accommodation led to EU membership in 2004. That same year, Slovenia was accepted as a full member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). On January 1, 2007, after meeting EU criteria for joining the euro currency union, it became the first post-Communism transition country to join the Euro area.

So by the time of our visit in 2019, Slovenia had been using the euro as its currency for 12 years. When some of our Slovenian acquaintances complained about bureaucratic red tape and regulations, or excessive taxes on businesses, I would ask if they thought that EU membership was to blame. I never got a response indicating they thought the EU was the problem; rather, they would blame their own national or city government for being too hidebound or bureaucratic. Some responses pointed back to governmental inertia inherited from Communist Yugoslavia, but they did not see the EU as limiting their autonomy. No doubt this little nation will have to continue accommodating EU membership while preserving Slovenian autonomy where it matters. But to me the future looks promising. After all, the Slovenians have been working the dynamics of autonomy and accommodation for 14 centuries.

[1] Estimates of the number of Home Guards and their families who were executed and buried in mass graves in Slovenia vary widely. The 100,000 figure is an estimate of the total number of all bodies found in post-World War II mass graves in Slovenia. See Wikipedia article “Mass Graves in Slovenia.”

[2] The statistics are from the Wikipedia article “History of Slovenia,” See the section “1980s: Towards Independence.”

[3] My casualty figures are taken from Gow and Carmichael, pp. 18818. But I’ve seen slightly different statistics in other sources, such as in the Wikipedia article “Ten-Day War.”

When I began studying Slovenia’s history, in preparation for our first blog posts, I thought I’d be blogging about a 14-century-long push for political independence against a long series of dominating—and often repressive—neighbors. As I dug deeper, I learned that this first impression was too simplistic. Instead of a continuing, if intermittent, struggle for sovereign independence, I now see Slovenian social and political history as a dynamic interaction between autonomy and accommodation.

Early Feudal Period: 600–1400 A.D.

Slovenes began moving into areas of present-day Slovenia in the second half of the 6th century A.D. In 623, they joined the tribal union of the Slavic King Samo to throw off control by the Pannonian Avars, an alliance of Eurasian tribes who came from the east. Both before and after the reign of Samo , the Slovenes of Carniola (roughly, today’s regions of Gorenjska, Notranjska, Kamniško Zasavska, Ljubljanska, and Dolenjska-Belokranjska on my regional map) were vassals of the Avars. Yet it appears they enjoyed some degree of local autonomy, as historical accounts refer to the Carniolans, as well as the Slovenes of Carinthia (the Kororška region and adjoining territory now in Austria) and Styria (Štajerska), as electing their own regional leaders, or “dukes.” Primož, our ebullient tour guide to Piran, even recounted to us the probably apocryphal tale that the Slovenian tradition of electing their local dukes under a linden tree had influenced Thomas Jefferson and the Founding Fathers at the time of the American Revolution.

After the period of Avar domination, the Slovenian provinces became part of Charlemagne’s empire (second half of the 8th century). Subsequently, they became feudal fiefs of various Catholic bishoprics or Austrian or German princes until the end of the 14th century, when the provinces inhabited primarily by Slovenes came under Habsburg rule. Throughout this period, these provinces continued to have a landed aristocracy that apparently remained in charge of local matters, while owing feudal fealty to whatever “overlord” happened to own the province at the time.

I’m condensing and simplifying a lot of historical detail [1] here to underscore a broad point. Throughout these first eight centuries, the Slovenes who lived in the lands forming what is now Slovenia practiced a substantial, though variable, degree of local autonomy—handling their own sociopolitical affairs, including most matters of commerce—while accommodating, in a practical way, the necessary feudal duties, taxes, etc., owed to an outside political “sovereign.”

Provinces of the Holy Roman Empire: 1400–1800

This interplay of autonomy and accommodation continued during the next four centuries, when Slovenian lands were ruled by the Habsburgs as provinces of the Holy Roman Empire. Provincial governors and administrators were often outsiders sent from the imperial court in Vienna, but even local aristocrats were increasingly more German, in language and culture, and less Slovenian. In these conditions, maintaining a workable balance between local autonomy and accommodation was neither easy nor without human cost. The peasants revolted in 1478 (in Carinthia), 1515, 1573 (Gubec’s Rebellion), 1635, and 1713. They never won any of these uprisings, and their leaders usually died in the fighting or were captured and executed. But these violent protests did force both local and more distant rulers to ameliorate at least some of the commoners’ grievances, rebalancing Slovenian autonomy and accommodation as medieval feudalism evolved into absolute monarchy.

Slovenia in the Illyrian Provinces of Napoleon’s Empire

A brief but significant respite from accommodating Habsburg rule occurred at the time of Napoleon, when French armies moved east from Italy to occupy the Slovene and Croatian provinces, cutting Austria off from the Mediterranean. From 1809 until 1814, what is now Slovenia formed part of the Illyrian Provinces (reviving an ancient name for the lands bordering the east side of the Adriatic Sea), which were incorporated into Napoleon’s French Empire. The French governors of the provinces introduced important civil reforms, including the Code Napoléon, a fairer tax regime, (limited) separation of church and state, and equality of all citizens before the law (in principle, if not in practice). These reforms, accompanied by new notions of civil society arising from the French Enlightenment and Revolution, had major consequences for the Slovenian sense of national identity, modernizing the terms in which Slovenes thought about autonomy and accommodation.

Slovenian Nationalism Emerges

The French army and governors were gone by 1814, but the French occupation left behind a heightened or reawakened sense of national (ethnic) identity among the South Slav “nations” (we might say “peoples”). Interest grew in the Slovene language and culture and in political unification. But political unification was not necessarily interpreted as political independence. Even during the political unrest of the “bourgeois revolution” of 1848 and through subsequent decades, political unity was more often expressed as winning recognition for Slovenian (or Slavic) ethnicity equal to that accorded by the Habsburg empire to Austrian and Hungarian ethnicity. The political progressives of the 19th century were typically more interested in making the Dual Monarchy (of Austria and Hungary) into a Triple Monarchy than in declaring political independence from the empire. The aim, in short, was again to balance autonomy with accommodation.

An Independent Slovenian State—Briefly

World War I put an end to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Encouraged by the victors’ principle of national self-determination [2] in remaking the map of Europe, the proponents of Slavic nationalism in Slovenia declared a “State of Slovenes, Croatians, and Serbs” in October 2018. Its territory would have comprised what is now Slovenia, Croatia, the Trieste region, and the part of Carinthia now in Austria. But Italy, with the connivance of its World War I allies (historians call it “the London Pact”), was already invading the Slovene provinces from the west and seemed ready to go all the way to Ljubljana and beyond. The newborn State of Slovenes, Croatians, and Serbs was forced to turn to the Kingdom of Serbia for military support against the Italian invaders. By the time the dust settled in 1920, Trieste and its surroundings were part of Italy, most of Carinthia was part of the new Austria, and the remainder of the Habsburg Slovenian provinces was integrated into the new Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes under the Serbian monarchy. Note the change in order of the three Slavic ethnicities, moving from the Slovenian-initiated “state” to the Serb-dominated “kingdom.” So yes, Slovenes had reconfigured autonomy and accommodation, but under duress.

The First Yugoslavia

At its creation, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes was a parliamentary monarchy with a Constituent Assembly to pass legislation. But ethnic and regional interests and animosities increasingly undermined its rapid succession of governments as parties and interparty alliances split and reformed like a superheated lava lamp. In June 1928, in the midst of bitter parliamentary wrangling over a treaty with Italy, a Serb deputy in the Assembly shot five members of the Croatian Peasant Party, including that party’s leader. In January 1929, King Alexander used the political crisis as a pretext for abolishing the constitution, discontinuing the Assembly’s session, and declaring himself dictator. The name of the kingdom, which had informally been known as Yugoslavia (land of the southern Slavs), was officially changed to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. While Slovene political leaders remained more or less aloof from the inter-ethnic fray, the friction between Croats and Serbs grew. In October 1934, King Alexander was assassinated during a visit to Marseille, France, by an activist connected to Croatian and Macedonian revolutionary groups. Croats and Serbs continued to battle for power and control of ethnicity-defined territory until April 1941, when the Axis powers invaded and occupied the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.

During this turmoil, Slovenian politicians enhanced Slovenian local autonomy through creation of the University of Ljubljana (1919), Radio Ljubljana (which broadcast in Slovenian), a Slovenian national museum, and the Slovenian National Theatre. Elements on both the traditionalist-clerical side and the liberal-left side of Slovenian political life were pushing for still greater Slovenian autonomy within the kingdom—but not yet for political sovereignty. Even these more demanding factions within Slovenian civil society were still seeking to realize their own vision of an appropriate balance of autonomy and accommodation.

[1] See the page “Sources on Slovenian History” for my sources and the details I’m glossing over here.

[2] In “national self-determination,” the “national” refers to a “people” as a nation (an ethnic majority in one geographic area), not to political nation-states. I did not realize that until I was reading about the Austro-Hungarian Empire as an “empire of nations”—which to us would be an empire of ethnic groups.

In my previous post, I wrote about ways in which Slovenia’s four decades as part of Communist Yugoslavia shape the context for cooperation and competition today. In this post, I’ll recount some of the ways we found cooperation and competition expressed in Slovene civil society during our visit.

A couple of posts ago, I described how Slovenes’ personal enterprise often takes the form of a family enterprise: a cooperative venture among participating family members, crossing several generations. Another common aspect of this knack for enterprise is a keen sense of competition with other Slovenians to be the best in the business. For example, Primož Žgajnor described how a wine-improvement association with which he had formerly worked was able to get Slovenian wineries (many of which are multigenerational family enterprises, some following centuries-old traditions) to make the agricultural and wine-processing changes tailored for each farm’s soil, microclimate, and cellaring style. The association’s representatives would say “Your neighbor at [family name of the winery in the next valley] has taken our advice for his operation, and he’s getting good results.” Another example is Simon, our resident manager at Marta Studio, who wanted the family’s lodging rental business to become the best hotel in the city.

Primož saw this interpersonal competitiveness as a Slovenian trait that could sometimes block progress. “Here’s a joke we tell on ourselves,” he began. “How do you defeat a hundred Slovenes with a single bullet? You throw a sausage into the middle of them, then shoot the one Slovene left.” I still smile at this joke, but I also feel it misrepresents something special I observed in the personal competitiveness and pride my Slovenian acquaintances expressed. Their sense of competition never took the form of putting someone else down: to be the best you can be doesn’t mean you denigrate your competition. For instance, I was bantering with a waiter at Pizzeria Foculus about how busy the restaurant was and what that meant about the quality of their pizzas. “Well, I won’t say we have the best pizza,” he replied, “but I will say we are one of the best.” The cut-throat competition that has been honed to a potent business weapon in the U.S. doesn’t appear to have a toehold in Slovenian civil society.

This regard for one’s competition can open productive avenues for cooperation. With Primož’s account of working with competing wineries in mind, I asked Pavel and Anna Jarc (family members of a viniculture-based tourist farm) about the relationships among the multitude of small vineyard-wineries surrounding them. They said there was competition, particularly with respect to the quality of wines from different wineries, but they also stressed the value of cooperating with other vineyard-wineries to bring more tourists and more business to their region. A neighbor initiated the idea of establishing a network of hiking trails that partly follow the local roads and farm paths and partly wind alongside and through the manicured rows of vines, creating a “vinotour” attraction. Creating and maintaining these trails requires joint effort by many of the vineyards. Many also participate in local festivals that celebrate seasonal traditions and showcase local crafts alongside the region’s wines and winery-based tourist farms.