3438 SLOVENIA (Slovene Littoral) - Village market in Padna

The Istrian hinterland has always been very important to supply fresh and high quality food for all coastal towns. The small village Padna, located not far for Piran, and first mentioned in sources dating to 1186, has been doing this for hundreds of years. The village is surrounded by olive groves where some trees are more than 300 years old. It has been known for its large quantities of olive oil products for a long time.

3330, 3349, 3373 SLOVENIA (Slovene Littoral) - The olive harvesting and manufacture of extra virgin olive oil in Piran

3330 The olive harvesting (1)

Posted on 03.01.2020, 11.01.2020, 19.01.2020
Native to the Mediterranean Basin, the olive tree is one of the oldest and more important domesticated crops raised by humans, and it seems that the olives were turned into oil since 6000 BC. Even today, after thousands of years, the olive oil is an important cooking oil in countries surrounding the Mediterranean, and it forms one of the three staple food plants of Mediterranean cuisine, along with wheat and the grape.

3349 The olive harvesting (2)

A blend of sun and sea breeze, along with the microclimate of the salt pans add a distinctly bitter and spicy flavour to the olives grown in Istria Peninsula, in the area between the Adriatic Sea and the Karst Rim, therefore also in Piran. As a result, the extra virgin olive oil from Slovenian Istria has a protected indication of origin, and the region was proclaimed the best olive oil region in the world in 2016 and 2017. The olive harvesting season extends from October to November. Carefully picked olives make their way to torklje, a special oil press from which oil flows.

3373 Manufacture by cold pressing, in the manual torklja press,
of extra virgin olive oil

 

3183, 3186 SLOVENIA (Slovene Littoral) - The fishermen in Piran

3183 Piran - Fisherman square, next to the town's inner port (mandracchio)

Worldwide, for populations that inhabit the coasts of the seas and oceans, fishing is one of the main occupations of ancient times. In Slovenian Istria, however, historical and political developments have radically and definitively changed the situation. For many hundreds of years, the population of Piran was predominantly Italian, but in 1954 the town was transffered to Yugoslavia, the result being a massive exodus of Italian-speaking inhabitants. The new Comunist government of Yugoslavia sought to replace the old population with immigrants, so several traditional economic trades, among which are fishing, started to dissapear.

3186 Piran - Fisherman repairing a fishing net

In the 1980's,  the number of fishermen increased, and the statistics for 1996 demonstrate that there were 40 fishermen in Piran, whose only sourse of income was fishing, and 39 persons who engaged in fishing as their secondary activity. Following the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1991, and the establishment of the new state border between Slovenia and Croatia, new problems arose for the fishermen from Slovenia, who lost some resourses in the now croatian waters, where they used to fish, and had to adapt their strategies in various ways. One of these is the strategy of connecting fishing with tourism.