Overview

The mention of a traditional European "wine tour" conjures up images of sommeliers in tuxedos, five-star hotels, and touristy château after château. Tourists are taken through commercial cellars, walking the exact same paths that hundreds of thousands of other tourists have tread, with the same winemakers. For most people, a pre-packaged template wine tour through Burgundy or Bordeaux is a safe bet: they get to try critically-acclaimed wines that are available all around the world, stay in fancy hotels, eat at touristy restaurants, and then fly home with a suitcase of wine, all in an environment controlled by a tour guide for maximum efficiency and pleasure. Traditional wine tours are the equivalent of staying in a resort, and for most people, a traditional wine tour is a pleasurable experience.

Not your traditional wine tour...

On the contrary, this isn't a wine tour at all – it's a full-on wine adventure. We travel. We meet new people. We learn how to cook. We taste. We make memorable connections. We take time and relax in the vineyard or on the beach or by the pool.  

The winemakers you will meet won't be in suits – they will be in straw hats and overalls, having just returned from the fields that they work. They will probably have beards. The cellars we will enter aren't tourist destinations – they are real, working cellars where time stops – cellars that few non-Slovenes have ever had the pleasure of entering.

The wines we drink will be exotic and like nothing you've ever tried – rich in minerals, earthy, and free from pesticides and preservatives. Our tastings often come straight from the barrels; wines that only a lucky few have ever tried. We will hike the vineyards, hearing the stories of the vines from the winemakers themselves. We will get dirty.

As the sun sets over the vineyards, we reject five-star hotels in favor of stays on homesteads and with families. Instead of eating at the same critically-acclaimed restaurants as hundreds of thousands of other tourists, we eat at local, family owned restaurants or at the winemakers' homes where delicious organic fruits, vegetables, and meats are grown and raised only a few feet away from where they are cooked.

You will have the opportunity to develop friendships and lasting relationships with the winemakers and families that we stay with who see so few international tourists. Instead of being another faceless, nameless tourist in a long line of others, you will have the opportunity to really get to know the winemakers and their families. Expect hugs and teary goodbyes, with promises to stay in touch and maybe even work together on projects in the future.

This is an adventure that until now has been almost completely inaccessible to all but the most dedicated wine travelers. The natural wineries that we will visit are often incredibly remote – they are not tourist destinations. Over the years, your fellow traveler and guide Maja has built her career out of finding the very best of these hidden wineries, and now she wants to share these secrets with a select few other passionate explorers.

If you are looking for a traditional wine tour resort-type experience, look elsewhere. If you are ready to go on a real adventure: getting dirty in the vineyards and making friends with winemakers in a beautiful and exciting country with exotic wines, then you are exactly the type of person we are looking for. We'd love to have you on board!