• Spetember 2-12, 2021 Flavors of Slovenia (Eleven Days)
Price: $3495 | Single Supplement: $320
• September 12-19 Optional Croatian Cuisine and Culture Extension (Eight Days)
See Details and What’s Included below
Slovenia boasts a diversity of climates, landscapes, terroirs, and influences from neighboring countries’ traditions and storied pasts. All this translates into delightfully rich food cultures with diverse micro-regions, each with their own longstanding customs, specialty dishes, and wine varietals. Savor all of these fresh, organic, and local culinary delights, that Slovenia has to offer.
This tour highlights individual food and drink purveyors across the whole of Slovenia. It’s a uniquely curated experience presenting a special opportunities for our guests to sit down, talk with, and learn from a plethora of friendly local producers, winemakers, and chefs in their own cellars, houses, kitchens and gardens.
Book now by completing the Provisional Registration form (select “Flavors of Slovenia“). You’ll also be given an option to add the “Croatia’s Culture and Cuisine” tour extension.
For more details about Provisional Registrations, please click here.
If you would like to book this tour just for your own group of friends or family (6-16 people), we can offer a private tour with dates to suit your travel needs.
*Itinerary details and hotels are subject to change
**Tour operated in partnership with Savor the Experience Tours and Roads Less Traveled LLC
FLAVORS OF SLOVENIA | September 2-12, 2021
Days 1-3
Welcome to Ljubljana
- Elongated walking tour of the city with a few quick-bite stops
- Introduction to Slovenian craft beer which doubles as a historic and cultural overview of the country
- Leisure time in the city on a Friday afternoon to enjoy everyone’s favorite ‘Open Kitchen’ (Odprta Kuhna) featuring 40+ food kiosks from around the city and around the country to sample the Slovenian kitchen.
- Visit with bee-keepers to find out why bees and honey are a quintessential part of Slovenian culture (includes tastings of honey and honey products)
- Lunch at farm run by an amazing woman who serves up her homemade brandies, schnapps, beer and even elderflower champagne alongside local cold cuts and cheeses from the northern region of Gorenjska.
- Time to enjoy the beautiful settings of Lake Bled, Slovenia’s most visited sight.
- Ljubjana | 3 nights
Days 4-6
Eastern Slovenia
- Tour and tasting with a winemaker behind some daring and experimental twists on many of the eastern Slovenia’s classic wines varietals.
- Countryside walk through idyllic villages and vineyards in wine mirco-region of Jeruzalem
- Meet with one of Slovenia’s few female winemakers at her winehouse with 360-degree views of Austria and Slovenia
- Knock back a glass of wine made from the oldest vine in Europe (over 400 years old) and stroll the old town streets of Maribor, Slovenia’s second city.
- Visit the charming riverside town of Ptuj (the country’s oldest town, dating from 69 AD)
- Learn how Slovenes make the delicious nutty and smokey taste of pumpkin seed oil, the ubiquitous speciality of the region, as we tour and taste at a local mill
- Tastings and tour at family-run chocolate shop that uses truly local fillings like elderflower and pumpkin oil for their bon-bons
- Sample all the essential flavors of Slovenia’s chicken-head region, like bograc (a spicier, thicker cousin to goulash), chicken paprikash with dödoli (a hearty potato-based dish) and gibanica, the multi-layered cake which seemingly has every ingredient packed into it
- Eastern Slovenia | 3 nights
Days 7-10
Western Slovenia
- Nosh on organic herbal cheeses that mature in an old bunker built by Italians some 100 year ago
- Get introduced to many mindblowing wines in four different micro-wine regions. Open your eyes (and palate) to local-only varietals such as Teran, Zelen, Rebula, Malvazija and Refosk.
- Have your own Middle-earth experience in Europe’s deepest subterranean canyon, the UNESCO protected Skocjan caves
- Pair 95-point sparkling wines with the region’s best guanciale (uber thin slices of pork cheek) in a 13th-century château that is home to Otto, every guest’s favorite dog in Slovenia
- Sample the flavors of the old Habsburg empire at a restaurant where Slovenia, Italy and Austria all come together
- Learn what it takes to get Bio-organic certification at an olive farm where the only thing better than their olive oil might be the setting overlooking the orchards and the Adriatic Sea
- Afternoon of sampling homemade cheese, marmalades, olive oil, herbal salts and jellies made from combinations of wine and herbs at a family farm that is the epicentre for Slow Food Slovenia. Weather permitting, a private cooking class will be outside in their Mediterranean herb garden
- Immerse yourself in the world of macerated wines (also called orange wine) and learn about the traditions and methods using Georgian amphoras to make this skin contact wine. This homestead perfectly pairs regional home-cooked dishes with five of their best wines.
- Western Slovenia | 4 nights
Day 11
Farewell
Enjoy our final breakfast. We can help with arrangements for transfer to Ljubliana Airport, Trieste, or to rail stations in Italy.
Those who sign-up for the Optional Croatia Extension will continue directly to Croatia.
September 2-12, 2021 (Eleven Days)
Price: $3495
Single Supplement: $320
• Optional post-tour Croatia extension September 12-19 (Begins in Slovenia, ends in Split, Croatia; stay tuned for details)
What’s Included:
Tour lead by Andrew Villone and Trish Feaster, 10 nights’ lodging; all breakfasts, 12 meals, 5 wine tastings, various other tastings, local guides, entrance fees to included sights and ground transport by small bus.
Important Exceptions:
Tour participants are responsible for the cost of drinks (except when included), free-time sightseeing & meals, and expenditures of a personal nature.
*Itinerary details subject to change
**Tour operated in partnership with Savor the Experience Tours and Roads Less Traveled LLC
If you would like to reserve a spot on this tour, please complete the online Provisional Reservation form (select “Flavors of Slovenia“). For more information about Provisional Reservations, please click here.
If you have additional questions please email us at:
thetravelphile@gmail.com
CROATIAN CULTURE AND CUISINE (OPTIONAL TOUR EXTENSION) | September 12-19, 2021
Day 1
Welcome to Croatia
- After breakfast in Slovenia, we’ll take private transport to cross into Croatia.
- Buzet, Motovun, truffle demonstration & lunch, Groznjan visit and tastings, dinner in Momjan.
- Visit to a trio of charming hill towns in the Istrian interior.
- Truffle hunt with local truffle hunter and their dogs followed by a truffle-filled lunch and local wines and other products.
- Late afternoon to browse artisan shops and art galleries near your hotel. Dinner in a very local konoba (Croatian traditional eatery) with delicious kobosice (spice sausages), gnochi with goulash and their private wine selection to wash everything down.
- Elongated walking tour of the city with a few quick-bite stops
- Rovinj | 1 night
Day 2
Rovinj, a Roman Arena, and the Countryside
- Morning tour of Rovinj, the most beautiful seaside town in Istria.
- Then some very unique pairing: honey and wine—served as one spoonful together—from a central Istrian winemaker who also keeps bees.
- Visit to largest Roman arena outside Italy in the city of Pula.
- Let’s go off the grid to a goat farm run by gregarious self-taught cheesemaker and farmer.
- Enjoy a truly epic feast at their renovated 14th-century farmhouse.
- Sample yoghurt, curd and whey, fresh lactic cheeses, semi-firm cheeses and caramel alongside whatever the family decides to cook up that day. This includes a bevy of hot dishes (soups, stews, sometimes even amazing curries or kebabs) and seasonal vegetables from their garden.
Day 3
Pag Island
- After breakfast, we’ll drive down the coast and stop at the island of Pag.
- Enjoying a curated tasting of their famous Paski Sir (sheep’s cheese), wine tasting and sampling local delicacies at big lunch at a Boskinac winery & restaurant, a gastronomic experience that was captured on Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations “Croatia” episode.
- Continue down Pag onto the Dalmatian coast to the oft overlooked city of Zadar. Its old town has an eclectic mix of architecture alongside“the most beautiful sunset in the world” according to one Alfred Hitchcock.
Days 4-7
Split and Vis Island
- Before catching the ferry to the island of Brac, we stop in port city of Split and tour the palace built by Roman Emperor Diocletian in 297 AD as his retirement pad.
- 3pm to 4:35pm catamaran to Vis Town. Transfer to Komiza town on other side of the island.
- “Welcome to Vis” dinner.
- Vis “Discover Tour” followed by lunch at George III Fort
- Free time in Vis Town.
- Experience Croatian maritime traditions and sail to Bisevo
- Free time available for optional activities such as hike, sea-kayak or scuba
- Gastro tour
- Final dinner
- Vis | 3 nights
Day 8
Farewell
- Farewell breakfast
- 7:30am to 9:50am ferry
- OR private transfer to Split Airport direct from Komiza.
Optional Croatian Culture and Cuisine Tour Extension Dates and Details:
September 12-19, 2021 (Eight Days)
Price: $TBA
Single Supplement: $TBA
• Optional post-tour Croatia extension September 12-19 (Begins in Slovenia, ends in Split, Croatia; stay tuned for details)
What’s Included:
Tour lead by Andrew Villone and Trish Feaster, 7 nights’ lodging; all breakfasts, 6 meals, 3 wine tastings, various other tastings, local guides, entrance fees to included sights, ferry transfers, and ground transport by small bus.
Important Exceptions:
Tour participants are responsible for the cost of drinks (except when included), free-time sightseeing & meals, and expenditures of a personal nature.
*Itinerary details subject to change
**Tour operated in partnership with Savor the Experience Tours and Roads Less Traveled LLC
If you would like to reserve a spot on this tour, please complete the online Provisional Reservation form (select “Flavors of Slovenia“, make notation that you would like to join the Croatia extension). For more information about Provisional Reservations, please click here.
If you have additional questions please email us at:
thetravelphile@gmail.com