Vineyard cottages of Slovenia combine tradition, wine, comfort

Far from the madding crowd, vineyard cottages of southeastern Slovenia make a perfect place to lay back and relax, get together with family and friends, and enjoy local food and wine. For many they serve as a base to explore the countryside or even the country.

Small wooden, stone or brick cottages set on the edge of a vineyard known as zidanica in Slovenian have traditionally been used by small winemakers to make their wine and store tools, but also for them and their family to take a rest during intense work in the vineyard, CE Report quotes The Slovenia Times.

Featuring a utility area, a cellar with a press and a living area, such cottages dot the winemaking regions of Dolenjska, Bela Krajina and Posavje where many vineyards are small and often run by people who make wine as a hobby to share with their family and friends rather than a business.

Through time many of these vineyard cottages have come to be used as vikends - holiday or weekend homes - and later they also began to cater to tourists.

Vineyard cottage tourism really took off during the Covid pandemic when a ban on travel between municipalities was enforced and visitors were looking for accommodation where they could avoid crowds. At the time, the visitors were mostly locals, but foreign guests have prevailed since.

Visitors can choose between two types of vineyard cottages or zidanicas; one are open-type cottages where they can only get home-made wine and a charcuterie board or other drinks and food when the cottage has a registered activity, and the other type also provide accommodation.

Wine and charcuterie board

The Open Vineyard Cottages (Odprte Zidanice) project and site is run by the Trška Gora Wine Growers' Association and involves eleven cottages from Trška Gora, a 428-metre hill near the city of Novo Mesto, and the surrounding area, its president Marjan Lisac, says.

The cottages are as a rule open on weekends or on other days by appointment. Five also welcome groups and have a wider range of foods and drinks, while the other six are smaller, where the visitors are served only lunch meats and wine made by the owner.

This type of cottages attract around 5,000 visitors a year and the numbers are going up steadily. In a bid to popularise them further they have launched a project called the Open Vineyard Cottages Trail where visitors collect stamps on their loyalty cards.

"When they collect a certain number of stamps, they get a T-shirt, and if they visit all the cottages, they get a backpack," Lisac told the Slovenian Press Agency.

Srečko Krnc runs a vineyard cottage on top of Trška Gora, just below the pilgrim church dedicated to St Mary. He joined the Odprte Zidanice project to promote his wine and sales. He treats visitors to his wines, the dry ruby red Cviček, the bit darker Blaufränkisch or white wine blends and cured meats.

"Initially, demand was quite good, but now it has decreased somewhat. People don't drink wine as much as they used to," he says. One drawback is that he can only offer wine and cured meats. "Not everyone drinks wine. They would drink something else, which I cannot and must not serve," he says.

Accommodation, sauna and jacuzzi

Meanwhile, cottages that also offer accommodation are associated in the Tourism in Vineyard Cottages project, which is run by the Novo Mesto Development Centre. Its official Mojca Badovinac says some 45 providers from the area of Dolenjska, Bela Krajina and Kozjansko are involved.

Visitors, over 70% of them from abroad, spent more than 8,000 nights at those cottages last year. Most of the visitors are couples, many are families. Guests from Slovenia mostly come for a couple of days and foreigners spend two to five days on average or even more.

"We've had visitors who spent a whole four weeks at the cottage," Badovinac said at a recent event in Šentjernej at which the project was presented to vineyard cottage owners interested to join in.

Local visitors come to relax, and enjoy nature and peace, while foreign guests often use cottages as a base to explore the country and visit sights such as the Alpine lakeside resort of Bled or the Postojna Cave. After all, Slovenia is a small country.

"The biggest number of visitors come between May and September, while in the other months, it's mainly the cottages that have amenities such as a sauna or a jacuzzi that get visitors," Badovinac says. Most people book accommodation through Booking, Airbnb and zidanice.si.