Gornja Radgona, a sparkling wine town

What Gornja Radgona is, on the Mura border

SURS gives Gornja Radgona 3,179 residents and its municipality 8,555 on 1 January 2026. It had only 1,639 arrivals in 2025, so most visitors stay at one of the nearby spas and come over for the day. The castle crowns the hill above town, and beneath that hill lies what really draws people here.

Slovenia’s first sparkling wine, from 1852

The tourist board says the first Slovenian sparkling wine was born in these hills in 1852, and that the Radgonske gorice winery has been making Zlata Radgonska Penina by the traditional bottle-fermented method for more than 170 years. It rests on the lees for at least 24 months, and wine from exceptional years can be aged for a decade or more. The same source calls Radgonske gorice the oldest and most decorated sparkling wine producer in the country.

The father of the wine was Anton Kleinošek, a passionate card player. Legend has it that he lost his vineyards and his business in one night. They were bought by the Swiss-French Bouvier family, distant relatives of Jacqueline Kennedy Bouvier.

A tasting in the dark

The experience, which the tourist board includes among its Slovenia Unique Experiences, starts in the courtyard of Dom Penine at Jurkovičeva 25. A sommelier guides you through the Pod rimskim kolesom and Pod slapom cellars, showing the oldest bottles in the archive. You taste Zlata Radgonska Penina brut as a benchmark, walk in complete darkness, and when the lights come on the Pod skalo cellar appears.

Then comes the main event, a Chardonnay sparkling wine that has never been exposed to light at any stage of production. First there’s a film telling the wine’s story and a discussion of the science of how light affects wine. Guests cover their eyes and the guide, wearing night-vision goggles, serves it in the dark. The tasting takes place 13 m under the castle hill, lasts about two hours, and no more than 2,000 bottles of this wine are made each year.

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Radenci and the surrounding hills

The tourist board suggests combining the tasting with a bike tour of the vineyard hills, and Pomurje as a whole has more than 600 km of waymarked cycle routes. A few kilometres away are Radenci, with its mineral water, and Ljutomer, with its trotters, with the terraced vineyards of Jeruzalem above it. Close by too is Negova castle, inside its own landscape park, which the tourist board brings to life through Apollonia, the traveller in love. Upstream at Šentilj, a ferry still crosses the Mura into Austria. I’d stay in Radenci and plan things so I didn’t have to drive after the tasting.

If you are short on time, see the best tours in Gornja Radgona and pick one that fits your day.

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