Slovenia Food & Wine Tours
Slovenia is the size of Wales and has three wine countries, a truffle-and-Teran karst, an Adriatic coast with medieval salt pans, alpine lakes with a cream cake named after one of them, and a capital whose Friday market is the best lunch in the country. This is our Slovenia hub. Below are the top-rated food and wine experiences across the country, then our pages for Ljubljana, the wine areas of Goriška Brda and the Vipava Valley, Piran on the coast and Maribor, home of the world’s oldest vine.
Top-rated food and wine experiences in Slovenia
Start in Ljubljana: the Ljubljana hub for food tours and štruklji cooking classes.
Then the wine: Slovenia wine tours, with pages for Goriška Brda, the Vipava Valley and Maribor.
And the coast: Piran for seafood, salt and the wines of Slovenian Istria.
Bled and the Julian Alps: the original cream cake, sommelier wine tastings above the lake and Bohinj cheese, on our Lake Bled page.
Food and wine in Slovenia: how the country eats
Slovenia sits where the Alps, the Adriatic, the Karst and the Pannonian plain meet, and its food is all four: Alpine dairy and buckwheat in the north, Mediterranean fish and olive oil on the coast, Karst prosciutto and Teran in between, and paprika-heavy stews toward Hungary. The dishes to know are štruklji, rolled dumplings with cottage cheese or walnuts; jota, the sauerkraut and bean stew; Kranjska klobasa, the protected Carniolan sausage; žganci, buckwheat spoonbread; potica, the rolled nut cake; Prekmurska gibanica, the layered poppy-seed and apple pastry; and Bled cream cake. The wine is mostly white and mostly very good, and the country’s chefs, led by Ana Roš in Kobarid, have put it on the world’s restaurant map.
Ljubljana
The capital’s Central Market, under Plečnik’s riverside colonnade, is the best food address in the country, and on Fridays from spring to autumn the Open Kitchen turns the square beside it into an outdoor restaurant of forty stalls. Food tours and cooking classes start here. See Ljubljana food and wine tours.
Wine: three regions
Primorska in the west, Goriška Brda, the Vipava Valley, the Karst and Slovenian Istria, is Mediterranean and makes the country’s most famous wines, including the orange wines that made Brda a pilgrimage; Podravje in the east, around Maribor, is white-wine country with the world’s oldest vine; Posavje in the south-east makes Cviček and light reds. See Slovenia wine tours.
The coast and the Karst
Piran is a Venetian town on a point, with seafood, the Sečovlje salt pans and the Refošk and Malvazija of Slovenian Istria; the Karst behind it is Teran, air-dried pršut and the pop-up farm taverns called osmice. See Piran food tours.
Bled and the Alps
Bled is the lake, the island and the kremšnita, the cream cake invented at the Park Hotel in 1953; cooking classes in Bled teach štruklji and the alpine kitchen, and the castle has a cellar where you bottle your own wine. Bled is an hour from Ljubljana and most tours run from there.
When to come
May, June and September for wine and the coast; June for Brda cherries and the cherry festival; October for harvest, chestnuts and the Old Vine celebrations in Maribor; 11 November for St Martin’s Day, when the whole country opens the new wine. Winter is for Ljubljana’s market and the Alps.
How we choose
We list only experiences with a strong rating over a meaningful number of reviews and free cancellation where available, and we favour small-group and family-run hosts. FindEatLocal earns a commission when you book through GetYourGuide or Viator links on this page; it doesn’t change the price you pay. More about how we choose.
FAQ about Slovenia Food & Wine Tours
Frequently asked questions
Why Slovenia for food and wine?
Because everything is two hours from everything else: Ljubljana’s market in the morning, a Brda winery for lunch, the sea by evening, and the whole country was named European Region of Gastronomy in 2021 for a reason.
What food is Slovenia known for?
Štruklji, jota, Kranjska klobasa, žganci, potica, Prekmurska gibanica, Karst pršut, Bled cream cake, and wines from Brda, Vipava and Maribor.
Is Slovenia good for wine?
Yes; it has one of the oldest wine cultures in Europe, three distinct regions, the world’s oldest vine in Maribor, and Goriška Brda, one of the birthplaces of orange wine.
What is the best base for food and wine in Slovenia?
Ljubljana: every wine region, the coast and Bled are within an hour and a half, and the tours leave from there.
Can I combine Slovenia with Croatia or Italy?
Easily; Istria is two hours from Ljubljana and Trieste an hour from the coast. See Istria.
When is St Martin’s Day?
11 November, when the new wine is blessed and every wine region celebrates; Maribor’s is the biggest.