The author Ilija Trojanow talks about his fascination with wine, the importance of inebriation, the connection between winemakers and writers—and why wine is only good when it makes a conversation possible.
Born in Sofia in 1965, Ilija Trojanow is one of the best-known and most important German-language authors, his books have been translated into 31 languages—and he is a trained sommelier. Trojanow dedicated his latest work "A glass full of time—about a winemaker and his wine" (Residenz-Verlag, 18 euros) to his friend Reinhard Löwenstein. He ran the Heymann-Löwenstein winery in Winningen on the Moselle until the end of 2025 and is one of the most influential winegrowers in Germany. In the book, the author opens up new perspectives on the approach to wine between fascination and philosophy, inebriation and literature as well as enjoyment as a dialogue.
In "A Glass Full of Time", you describe your first encounters with simple wines in your family. How did you come to train as a sommelier?
Ilija Trojanow: When I was working on my novel "The World Collector" in Cape Town, I saw that you could take courses at the Cape Wine Academy to train as a sommelier. I thought it would be a perfect balance for someone like me who sits at a desk all day. It was an evening course three times a week and something completely different. The Cape Town environment with the very old wine estates was also very inspiring.
Have you ever worked as a sommelier?
Ilija Trojanow: No. I'm always surprised that writers are expected to earn money with another job. Writing is a full-time job. Novels are created through daily labour, which is similar to viticulture.
Has this preoccupation with wine influenced your work?
Ilija Trojanow: Surprisingly, I realised in this course that there are significant connections between wine and literature. Not in the sense of "celebrating life", but rather: How to create something from given materials. For the winegrower, nature provides a raw material to work with. For the writer, it is the tradition of language. Much of winemaking is about craftsmanship. But there are always moments when you have to have a vision or an idea of your own.
Do winemakers also have to be storytellers?
Ilija Trojanow: The importance of narratives is often underestimated, especially when it comes to wine. Many world-famous wines are so successful because they are accompanied by a certain gripping, convincing narrative.
In "A Glass Full of Time", Ilija Trojanow explores the fascination of wine.
Residenz Publishing HouseTalking about stories: In your book, you take a critical look at terms such as organic or biodynamic. Why?
Ilija Trojanow: Our entire industrial agriculture is extremely polluted. A lot of things are done that are not good for us or for nature. At the same time, however, there are niches where we want to be more pontifical than the Pope. People think: here is organic or biodynamic agriculture, which is healthy, and there is evil industrial agriculture. That is often simply not true. There are constructs of purity that sound good but have nothing to do with the complexity of wine production. My friend Reinhard Löwenstein has repeatedly pointed out such contradictions to me. But in principle, I welcome every step towards closeness to nature—if it actually reduces the overall impact and does not cause more impact elsewhere. We have to change our idea of "What is nature, what is culture? What is province, what is city?". Because the question is much more complex than we usually assume.
Are we romanticising wine too much?
Ilija Trojanow: We humans have lost our organic connection to nature. We have been driven out of a paradise of harmony with nature, and since late industrial capitalism, technology has dominated our lives. And now we are longing for simple possibilities again. In English, the buzzword is "reconnection". We imagine that we can reconnect with nature through wine. This is fuelled by narratives, because we always see images of pure romance in advertising: vineyards in the sunset or wooden barrels in a brick-vaulted cellar. No one shows photos of the sometimes very industrialised cellar management.
In your book, you also address the phenomenon of inebriation. Is the desire for inebriation inherent in us humans?
Ilija Trojanow: Not just us humans. Animals also seek out fermented fruit, and certainly not just to obtain high-energy food. Let's think of the most famous person in the world at the moment who doesn't take drugs: Donald Trump. Who is to say that he is not addicted to another mind-altering substance? He gets high on his ego. So: people always find forms of inebriation. I'd rather someone who drinks a little wine every day than someone like Donald Trump, who channels everything into himself. Even teetotallers talk about a kind of "high", the intoxication of being sober. There are always moments when you want to rise above the narrow confines of everyday routine, and there are different ways to get there.
The title of the book suggests that wine is a storehouse of time. Is that its most fascinating characteristic?
Ilija Trojanow: A mature wine can be a mirror of time. You think: What happened this year? What has happened in my life since then? And: wine grows on soil that is sometimes very old. It could therefore give you a sense of planetary time and earth history. Shell limestone, for example. When drinking such a wine, you should ask yourself: What is this and why is this wine growing on it today? You could imagine how our ancestors once crawled out of the sea and became land animals. As I wrote in the book: "A wine that does not reflect the passage of time is a sham wine."
Ilija Trojanow in Andalusia.
José OliverWhich wines do you personally prefer?
Ilija Trojanow: Basically, I appreciate the challenge and complexity of music, literature, and dialogue. In other words, works of art that initially amaze and irritate me a little, that I first have to get used to. I get nothing out of complaisance, it doesn't produce any surprises. In literature, too, pleasure doesn't come from poetry, but from the dialogue between me and the poetry. That's why I think wines are great if I don't fall in love with them at the first sip. Where I have to question my first impression and which taste completely different the next day. That's why I particularly like Riesling wines. I have also drunk great wines in Georgia. But there they are part of a tradition that goes back thousands of years. I'm a little sceptical when someone makes wines in amphorae here.
I get nothing out of flattery
Do you have to be ready for pleasure?
Ilija Trojanow: If you're not prepared to engage with art in order to enter into a dialogue, you won't be able to do anything with it. It's the same with wine. And this conversation is never predictable. It evolves according to my personal preferences and moods. What time of day it is, where have I just come from, have I had an argument with my partner—it all plays a role.
But can all wines open this conversation?
Ilija Trojanow: Not industrialised, overly made-up, interchangeable wines. It's like with people: How are you supposed to talk to someone who only utters prefabricated stanzas? How can something develop that surprises and enriches me? With wine, too, the only decisive factor for me is whether it makes such a conversation possible. These can be wines for ten euros, but there are wines for 200 euros where this is not possible.
Have you never been tempted to make wine yourself?
Ilija Trojanow: Reinhard Löwenstein once said: "The stupidest thing you can do as a wine lover is to make your own wine. You should rather take your money to a winegrower and say: make me a few bottles or a barrel." I imagine I work at the highest level in literature. That's why I'm sceptical when someone comes to me and says: I'm going to write a novel too. Dilettantism is nice if you want to pass the time with it, but not as a serious occupation. So: No, I'd rather write books about wine.
Born in Bulgaria, he is a writer, publisher, and translator. He has lived in Africa, India, Germany, and Austria, has been a visiting professor at several universities and has received numerous awards. His books have been translated into 31 languages.