2 Wine Regions in ONE Daytrip!
Maybe you had some hazy idea or a hopeful hunch that Green Slovenia produces wine, but you might be surprised & excited to know we actually have 7 completely different wine regions here..
Each region produces at least one or two completely unique wines too, which can ONLY be found in that particular wine region and nowhere else in the world!
All 7 wine regions are well worth a visit and ALL are reachable from the Lodge in epic, but simple daytrips..
Three of the those wine regions are tucked away in the East of the country, still within 1 to 2 hours from the Lodge, but the other Four are Mediterannean wine regions and just around the corner from the Lodge!
We still feel like excited visitors here, just like you, but we quickly realised the big secret to discovering the best bits of Green Slovenia is to have a great location and simple logistics to make your holiday dreams can come true!
So in this article, we are gonna tell you about a simple daytrip from the Lodge to not one, but TWO of those Mediterranean wine regions, getting back easily in time to feed the Lipizzaners and have a nice cup of tea!
It is sooooo much better to make sure you have plenty of time avaialable in your Green Slovenian timetable to explore and enjoy each completely different wine region on it's own, but it is also worth knowing these 4 Mediterranean wine regions are all so ridiculously close to the Lodge, you could even see THREE or even ALL FOUR of them in just one epic Green daytrip!!
Why would I visit a Slovenian Wine Region?
Well, we would say why wouldn't you! We would also very confidently proclaim that if you have not visited at least one or two unique Slovenian wine regions then how on earth can you say you even visited Green Slovenia?!
Wine Regions are NOT JUST for Wine Tasting!
We need to help you understand that some or even all 7 of these beautiful mini regions in Slovenia may well still be completely unknown to you, but just cos you only maybe heard of Bled or Ljubljana so far, there really are MANY MANY MANY more amazing Secret places to visit here, without the crowds.. And several of these are the wine regions!
Maybe you were put off trying to visit a wine region, cos when you went to other wine visits around the world you just got packaged up like a burger into taste, taste, taste, buy, buy, buy and then having a box of wine sent home!
But Green Slovenia is full of thousands of family run micro vineyards where it is generally more important to enjoy the wine than to sell you a lot of bottles!
We have got some more important news for you too.. you DO NOT EVEN HAVE TO TASTE ANY WINE to visit a wine region, cos EVERY one of Slovenia's 7 wine regions is totally worth visiting on it's own, stunningly beautiful, packed full of castles, history, hiking, not so many other visitors and very good restaurants indeed.. All the perfect ingredients for a fab Green adventure!
Visitors often have romantic ideas about going wine tasting, but think about it.. If you are a couple in a car or a family, then probubbly only one of you can actually wine taste during the day, so it is really important that there is plenty of other stuff to entertain the rest of your party during the day..
We have even heard of visitors being given wine tasting opportunities in places like Bled & Ljubljana, which are not even IN wine regions!!
But how on earth can you really experience the magic & uniqueness of Slovenian wine by just opening a bottle in a place where they do not even make it!!
Sounds ridiculous, doesn't it, when put in black & white, but bet you get tempted to do exactly that, either by allocating way too little time to see the most beautiful country in Europe OR by only visiting the "phone monkey well known places" that are nowhere near those special wine regions!
Have just another little think about it and imagine having a glass of local wine with a locally cooked meal looking out over the terrace to EXACTLY where that food & drink came from and maybe even shaking the hand of the person who made that wine or walking amongst the lines of vines!
Now THAT is GREEN TOURISM indeed and we can confirm in our own humble opinion & experiences and from the multiple feedback we get from our own guests that you will also find the very best Green Slovenia Reastaurants out in the wine regions and the countryside, where the food & wine actually comes from..
So now we got you thinking, how about joining us on that little day trip to a couple of Green Slovenia's most beautiful Secret Places, which also happen to be stunning wine regions!
the Vipava Wine Valley..
We are incredibly blessed at the Lodge to be just 20 mins from, what we call, the Vipava Restaurant Cluster.. A cluster of 5 or 6 ridiculously good local Vipava Valley restaurants, just on the other side of Mt Nanos, the last mountain in Slovenia, which also signals the start of the Mediterranean..
The Vipava Valley is a 40 km long unique Green wine valley and everywhere here, you get an overwhelming feeling of being enclosed by the 1,000m high Green slopes on both sides of the wide valley, covered in vines, with cute villages, churches and castles on top of the multiple hills and mini Green peaks.
The unique wines to especially look out for here & try are Zelen, Pinela, Klarnica & Vipava Barbera to name just a few and to be crystal clear, this is the only place in the world where these particular wines are grown..
A beautiful river bursts out of 7 different mountain side springs in the little town of Vipava and runs all the way up the middle of the valley to the other end at Nova Gorica and the Italian border.
To fully appreciate how beautiful the Vipava Valley is you need to get off the motorway and larger roads to village hop a bit, but on this particular day out we had pre decided to skip up the valley on the motorway to reach our second wine region of the day perched on a set of hills overlooking Nova Gorica on the other side of the uber beautiful Soca river.. known locally as BRDA..
the Gorica Hills, (Goriska Brda) Wine Region..
Just drive over the Soca river bridge after Nova Gorica and you will enter yet another little Green world and yet another corner of Slovenia with rolling hills, covered with vines, cherry trees and olive groves..
We would say the two home grown white wines to especially look out for here in BRDA are the golden Rebula and Sauvignonasse, (which actually comes from the Tokaj grapes brought here during the Austro Hungarian empire) and grows perfectly in the Gorica hills to produce a fresh white wine..
Brda, ("hill" in Slovene), pronounced "Birda" is like a tiny island cut off from the rest of the world, but you could easily spend a whole daytrip here or include it as a big chunk of your day out just like we did on a sunny day in early May..
The main purpose of this blog is actually to show you some photos we took of lots of secret spots inside these two wine regions on our day out and so we labelled each photo firstly "Vipava" or "Brda", so you know which particular wine region you are looking at!
A Jolly Day Out in the Vipava and Gorica Hills (Brda) Wine Regions..
We left quite late at about 11am for the 20 min trip to the other side of Nanos mountain on the motorway to Vipava old town, an absolute favourite of ours.
One last important thing to say about both Vipava and Brda is how COMPLETELY DIFFERENT they are to each other and to anywhere else in Green Slovenia.
Indeed you will get that feeling, a bit like Deja Vue, pretty much everywhere you go in Green Slovenia, cos it sits right in the middle of Europe and has a little bit of everything that you might have dreamt about seeing in this grand old continent.
Vipava Old town..
Vipava is completely unique, there is nowhere else like it in Slovenia.. A little old town is squeezed up against high rock walls, (the other side of Nanos plateau), where those 7 springs gush out to create the Vipava river..
There is a big wide newly refurbished piazza in the centre of the old town with a line of Roman looking statues & giant trees and if we teleported you here with closed eyes and then you opened them, you would be totally convinced you were in Italy.. but the really great thing is you are not, you are in little old Slovenia!
A castle, destroyed by lightning centuries ago, sits temptingly on top of a perfect hill overlooking the old town and we encourage you to go hike up there for the incredible view and the mini challenge.
But you absolutely must have a little walk around the cobbled streets of the old town to find those springs popping out of the mountain side and on this mini tour you will walk right past THREE of the fab restaurants we include in our Vipava restaurant cluster!
Our Vipava mission for today was limited to a little stroll and a coffee at the best ice cream joint in the whole of Slovenia, (in our humble opinion and confirmed by legions of guests)!
Yep, hidden away in plain sight in the centre of this square is a lovely looking cafe, with locals sat outside enjoying a chat and a coffee.
The only clue that this might be some place very special are the school kids wandering around the old town with big smiles and an ice cream cone in their hands, but you also need to know that folk come down from Ljubljana to try the gelato here!
Our logistics were to have some late lunch in Brda, so we settled for an ice cream and a coffee and a stroll around the old town, even just doing this will lift your soul and allow you to get a feel of the place..
There is a little walking loop you can do if you go through the archway next to the ice cream cafe and it will take you past 3 of those restaurants on our Vipava cluster list, the seven springs of the Vipava river and a wine university, ending up back at our favourite little bakery, serving crusty bread, Italian style pasta and fantastic cakes..
Currently in 2025, we still have the frustration that the work of renovating the main Vipava river courseway that collects all the water gushing from the different springs, creating a little lake, has taken years, but at last looks very close to being finished..
So visitors can finally return to the spectacular little secret park at the back of the river to see 3 of the springs up close & personal and enjoy the small river side park filled with absolutely massive trees, way too wide to even hug!
Goriska (Gorica) Brda..
Our visit to Vipava today was just a flying one and you could & should take the old main road from Vipava up the Vipava Valley, winding through pretty little villages and lined with vineyards covering the steep slopes, but we chose today to zip up the motorway to the town of Nova Gorica, gateway to the BRDA hills..
Nova Gorica was pretty much built from scratch by the socialist Yugoslavs after WW2 when the beautiful old Slovenian town of Gorica was shoved into Italy and a very wiggly "Berlin wall" style border line sprang up between East and West!
Well nowadays the cities of Gorica in Italy and Nova Gorica in Slovenia are like one big social experiment with no borders and both unidentical twins were chosen to be the European city of culture for 2025..
No time for all that today as we were heading over the Soca river bridge reached from the other side of town and the best way to enter BRDA, as we will call it from now, is to cross that bridge, so you do have to know where you are intending to go when you get past Nova Gorica and the biggest village in BRDA is DOBROVO, so keep an eye out on the road signs for that..
We suggest you follow the route via HUM to KOCEVJE to SMARJE and then DOBROVO, driving through the cute little villages instead of using the new by pass road that whisks you past the best bits just after Hum..
There are so many other different things to build into a wonderful full daytrip out in Goriska Brda that you can read about here, but our mission today was to enjoy a late lunch in Smarje (which simply means St Martin's) and check out the restaurant there, one we had not gotten to try yet (as we always end up eating in a fave little vineyard just past Dobrovo with views over Italy)..
Smarje is one of Green Slovenia's most beautiful Hill Top Villages and sits on top of a hill defended for centuries by chunky Medieval towers and high walls enclosing the cute old town inside.
You won't be surprised to know that a lot of Slovenia's best hill top villages are located in the wine regions, it kinda makes sense as wine regions are often very hilly indeed with multiple perspectives and angles hitting the sunshine for the grapes with "high up hill top protection" for the inhabitants!
None of these hill top villages are so big though, so you can easily walk around them to explore in less than hour or so if you need to..
Smarje has sensational hill top vistas all around, but also helps you look into the past with photo boards posted outside many of the colourful houses and some ruins, so you can see how they used to look.
In typically shy, understated Slovenian style there will only be a few little shops in any of these hill top villages, selling locally made fragrances, honey, pottery, olive oil and all the stuff you actually want to take home as a present for Granny, but here in Green Slovenia it is all presented to you in such a relaxed and tranquil atmosphere.
The restaurant in Smarje was almost empty and this is not unusual in so many of these secret hidden places, so we first went inside and checked they were actually open and ordered from the house daily menu, getting such delicious local dishes, we had to take some more photos so you can see the quality of local food on offer here in Brda!
Maybe it is time again here to ask you if you really want to sit with thousands of people alongside a river in Ljubljana, or fight for a place in a cafe opposite a well known lake, when you might prefer to sit here, relaxed in Brda, eating this fantastic food and trying the golden local wine produced within a few footsteps of the restaurant?!
This was early May, but Brda is famous within Slovenia for producing the first cherries of the year and we were given a little bowl of the shiny red fellas as an appetizer!
After this fantastic lunch we took a stroll inside the walls of this colourful hill top village and we encourage you to explore every nook & cranny, in the knowledge that this village still has all the Medieval towers intact that protected it from Ottoman empire raids, with giant gates next to each tower, so a perfect example..
Do not forget to wander outside the gates too, where you get even better views of the rolling wine and cherry hills and a real perspective of how this fortress village once looked back in the day..
May is a particular favourite time for us to come visit Brda, not just for the cherries and wine, but spring generally, is in "fast forward mode" here, always a few degrees warmer than the rest of Slovenia and flowers bursting with colour.
There is a very good TIC (Tourist Info Centre) just inside the main tower entrance to Smartno from the little car park side and if you have not planned anything regarding wine tasting or visiting a vineyard, then they have a very handy list of local producers here, showing their availability and opening days, so in theory, you could just rock up and find a place to go wine tasting later in the day!
But a glass of unique local wine with a superbly cooked meal will also give you a feeling for life around here and then it is time to go exploring other villages or doing one of the numerous hikes available here through the vineyards and up & over the hills.
Like we said, we have a favourite vineyard with a restaurant attached where we love to go eat when we visit the far edge of Brda, exactly 55 mins directly from the Lodge by the way and even if your selected vineyard does not have a restaurant, often you will be offered what we call "Slovenian Tapas" if you do go wine tasting, with very generous portions, so this might well be enough food for that particular section of your day!
Well today, we only had time left to go visit the largest village in Brda, Dobrovo, just a short drive from Smartno for coffee and we stopped at the impressive castle there, which has a handy car park.
The castello was rebuilt in Renaissence times, but you can still see the older "same style as Smartno" Medieval towers on one side.
The small gardens here in Dobrovo Grad are beautiful with some seriously old trees and all the green pomp & flair of Italian style gardening on show too..
We do not encourage anti social behaviour on this website, but you could probably throw a stone here and reach Italy, it is so close!!
The unexpected highlight of the garden was a cafe terrace now open at the back of the castle with some huge mature olive trees.. A very nice place for a coffee indeed and shady in the afternoons!
Being such a small country with an even smaller population, the thing most visitors will be oblivious to here will be how restaurants in particular, seem to keep opening & closing and changing hands all the time.
So we were pleasantly surprised that for us there was a "new" castle restaurant open inside the castello. We had been in Dobrovo a few times recently, but never realised there had even been a restaurant in the castle, but the new owner explained he had just opened up a year ago!
The restaurant really brings extra life to this castle and helps to showcase the exquisite interior. The Art Deco orange glass door windows that lead into the restaurant were a particular highlight and we were shown a side room that looked fit to entertain Hercule Poirot or some royalty, but this is also where you can take coffee yourself, if you want!
The restaurant reopening also meant that lovely olive garden could come back to life, so even though we had a really wonderful meal in Smartno, we now regretted not knowing this restaurant was alive & kicking, just down the road in Dobrovo!
We did at least have a coffee and a chat with the very friendly owner and made a note to make sure we eat here at the castle next time we come to BRDA!
You can actually combine a tour of the castle with some coffee, wine or a meal, so we recommend you call Dobrovo castle directly before your trip and book ahead.
And this mini Green adventure is also a really good example and advice for any daytrip you will make in Green Slovenia, as guide books are so very quickly out of date, particularly concerning opening times and even whether a restauarant still exists, not to mention new ones opening like this one!
So our advice is to consult locals, plan ahead if possible and phone the actual restaurant or local TIC too, just to make sure your desired destination is open that day!
There are always other options open in any case, so do not stress, but our original plan was actually to go try another restaurant in the little village of Hum, (remember we recommended you enter Brda via Hum)..
Well we rolled up there without checking or calling before and the place was completely deserted, looked like the restaurant was stone cold closed for any business and had been for a while, so if it can happen to us living here, it sure can trip you up too!
Concluding this trip, we whizzed back the same way via the motorway through the Vipava Valley, so could easily have stopped off again in another location to either eat, explore somewhere else, wine taste or have a coffee..
By the way, our guests who go on daytrips to visit the Waterfalls and Gorges in the Soca valley often book a Vipava restaurant on the way back to the Lodge to complete a spectacular day out..
Like we said it only takes about an hour to go directly from the Lodge to Dobrovo AND THIS is the furthest of the 4 Mediterranean wine regions from the Lodge!
The other two Mediterranean wine regions we did not mention here are the Teran Karst region, which sits just on the other side of the Vipava Valley before the Italian border & Trieste and the VinaKoper wine region, which sits between the Lodge and the coast in a region we describe as "the Coastal Hinterland"..
So you could also easily choose to combine another trip home from Brda to the Lodge coming back instead through the Teran Kras wine region, instead of the Vipava Valley and get to see THREE wine regions in one leisurely day..
OR how about this.. Instead of coming directly back to the Lodge you could also come back through the Teran Kras going directly to the Slovenian coast for the evening to experience a taste of the Vinakoper wine region too!
This would be more of a driving day out Green adventure, but wow, your co Pilot and passengers could get to try a glass of Zelen, then Rebula, then Teran and then Malvazija OR a glass of Pinela, then Sauvignonasse, then Grganja (white Teran), then Refosk.. EXACTLY in the 4 different wine regions where they are grown AND in the same amazing day!!
This is not Wine fantasy, this is possible in such a tiny country, packed with so many amazing places to visit!
Our STRONG ADVICE though is to make sure you have enough time in your schedule to experience just one or two of these wine regions over single daytrips, but we particularly wanted to write this blog to show how stunningly beautiful & different the Vipava Valley and Gorica Brda mini regions actually are and to explain how easy it is to visit a couple of wine regions in a Green day out and NOT EVEN GO WINE TASTING!!
Hopefully you are seeing here in this blog that you really do have a lot of very surprising choices and do not have to follow the crowd..
By all means follow those crowds and shuffle around Ljubljana castle like penguins or do some wine tasting by Lake Bled, where no wines are actually grown.. you will still have an absolutely amazing day out, but at least by now you will realise how much of Green Slovenia you are totally missing out on and how easy peasy it is to go see it all, so we will close now by exclaiming once again..
You ain't even touched the side of the barrel of Green Slovenia if you haven't been to Brda or the Vipava Valley!
If we had said this at the start of this blog, you might have thought we were nuts, but we hope you will at least go see as many of the 7 Slovenian wine regions as you can now, close & personal for yourselves and we are pretty sure you are in for a very pleasant surprise indeed and maybe a glass of wine too!
French Connection en Slovenie
