In the town of Drace, about an hour north of Dubrovnik, you can wetsuit-up and dive into an underwater world of vino. For a country that loves wine, it shouldn’t come as too big of a shock that there’s now an underwater winery open to visitors.
Owners Ivo and Anto Šegovic and Edi Bajurin came up with the idea five years ago, dropping the first clay jugs of wine, called amphorae, into cages in the sea in 2013. They yearned to go back to the roots of grape-loving greeks, who were said to have stored their wine in amphoras of the Adriatic sea, thus giving their wine a pinewood aroma as well as protecting it. Mirroring this practice, Edivo Vina bottles their wine in the terra cotta amphora, and lets it sink in the sea 18-25 meters deep. After the wine is aged for three months, it remains in the sea for one or two years.
Edivo Viva now invites wine connoisseurs and curious guests to take the plunge and witness their submarine methods. The swim includes passing by a sunken ship at the bottom of Mali Ston Bay. If you’d prefer to stay dry, you can purchase the unique bottles online, coated in shells, coral and algae, making for the perfect souvenir to remember the Adriatic by.
Amanda Allbee is a travel intern for Paste and a freelance writer based out of Athens, Georgia.