How Croatian wine gained the royal seal of approval

The wine scene in the Slavonia region is not only great value, but has also been quietly accumulating awards - and even counts the Windsors among its fans

- Marianna Hunt

If Hobbiton had a love child with the Loire Valley, the offspring would be Zmajevac, a tiny winemaking community in Slavonia, a rural Croatian region famous for its adorable gabled wine cellars (known as “gators”), which burrow their rear ends into the hill so the bottles can chill in cool mud.

Wandering through the village, exploring both of Zmajevac’s two rival “wine streets” – one traditionally Catholic, one Protestant – I realised I had never seen such a concentration of cellars in my life.

I passed dozens of these gators, many of which house restaurants or bars and spill out onto the steep cobbled street. With its quirky tasting room, full of old typewriters and crockery cabinets, the Josić restaurant and winery caught our attention. I stopped for a free tasting, sipping crisp whites made from chardonnay and the local graševina grape before moving onto beefy reds that made me jealous of the diners in Josić’s restaurant being ladled steaming meat stew out of enormous cauldrons.

Croatian wine may not be particularly well known internationally, but it has been quietly accumulating awards, gaining a cult following among those in the know. And one of those people just happened to be Queen Elizabeth II. Wine from Slavonia was served at her coronation in 1953 and has been served at many of the most important royal events since then, including the weddings of the Prince and Princess of Wales and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.