You will not be disappointed with a stay at Valdhuber Apartments. The apartment is spacious, the people are friendly and the view from the balcony is priceless. Did I mention the wine yet?
Anyways, here’s a quick taste if you do decide to visit:
PICTURES of Vladhuber
The service comes complete with breakfast and coffee delivered to your door in a nice basket. Depending on how rowdy you get the night before, you have the option of breakfast in bed or on the cozy balcony overlooking the vineyards.
We hit the road back to Maribor to see if I could get my camera fixed, but a better use of your time would be to hit some of the other local vineyards like Leber Vraฤko Family Estate. You could also skip across the border to Austria in 5 minutes and there are a dozen wineries right there.
Otherwise from Maribor you can continue to Dveri Pax Winery and plunk down in their high class tasting room
PICTURES of tasting room
We showed up without an appointment and were lucky enough to still get a full tour. Here are some interesting facts from our tasting and tour.
History:
- Vineyards are close to the Croatian border in a town called Jeursualum.
- The town name comes from the knights who travelled through the city and since the wine was so good they stayed longer and named it Jeursalum
- Sipon, one of the prominent grape varieties in the region, means “good” in French
- The Chardonnay comes from a super steep hill that is considered too steep by the government to give any support for winemaking ventures
- Making wine for 800 years since they are owned by an Austrian Monestary
- A running joke at the winery that the church faction that owned the winery have a saying “work and pray”, so at the winery they say people can pray and we will work (drink the wine)
Recent Developments:
- In 2001 their vines were replanted and organized properly to better utilize the property size
- The barn was renovated into the cellar and winemaking facility
- A Maribor architect made the plan for the cellar door (Igor someone – Ana took his name)
- The cellar door is “historically protected” so when they went through renovations, they had to keep the sloping floors in the restaurant
Wine Reviews can be found here from the tasting (STILL NEED TO UPLOAD THEM)
The silver lining with COVID is sometimes we were lucky to get a more personalized experience and this was definitely one of those times.
We had the elegant tasting room to ourselves, so I was able to ask a million questions. We also got to try a few extra wines ๐
10/10 wine tasting experience.
After the tasting we were given a tour of the property. The restaurant is connected to the tasting room on a slanted floor with rustic pillars. I’m curious if they adjusted the chair and table legs to match the slant of the floor, but I forgot to ask.
We were quickly shown the winemaking facilities and then we were back on the road.
We actually split one wine tasting so that Ana could drive. We are also getting better at pouring out the wine, even if it does feel like a crime. It’s the toughest part of this work we do ๐
We drove up to Mur river and had a quick stop in Austria to see how the border controls were. As you can see there were none..
Right at the border is our next destination, the one, and only Radgonske Gorice, aka Champagne Heaven
This was easily one of my favourite spots of whole trip. The interior is spacious with the classic architecture, plus the cellar under the castle is a dream.
This cellar door is at the bottom of a hill just beside the Mura River. Of course on top of the hill is another castle. So if you want to see castles, then Slovenia is your spot!
We did the premium tasting because why not? The atmosphere at this place told us we had to go for the top spread.
Reviews can be found here (NEED TO UPLOAD)
By far the best one for both of us is the one they leave under the river for a year after secondary fermentation. The bottle is magical and the wine is exquisite to boot.
To keep the magic coming, we were so chatty, the serving lady got out the keys and took us into the cellar.
I’ll let the pictures do the talking, except did I mention there is a waterfall?
This is a must see and taste.
From here it was time to turn in for the evening. Ana booked us a special spot with unique accommodation. It looked promising, but I will recommend skipping this part of the tour.