White East and varied West and Southeast

The wine-growing region of Podravje that stretches across the eastern part of Slovenia primarily offers white wine varieties. The laški rizling is the most popular, followed by chardonnay and sauvignon. These wines are primarily dry; however, there are some highly valued wines with a higher content of sugar, including renski rizling, traminec and rumeni muškat. Red wine varieties also represent an important share, primarily including modra frankinja and modri pinot as well as the rare žametna črnina. The latter is produced from the grapes of the žametovka vine, which is especially known for its vine in Maribor's Lent, proven to be the oldest vine in the world.

In the wine-growing region of Primorska, the most popular wines are malvazija and rebula; however, wine-makers have again begun to cultivate autochthonous varieties, such as zelen, pinela and pikolit. There is also a strong production of red wine varieties, primarily merlot, cabernet sauvignon and refošk. The refošk vine from Karst is also used for the production of teran, a wine with a specific taste due to the soil. Moreover, it also has medicinal characteristics.

Red and white wines are also produced in the wine-growing region of Posavje. Most produced are modra frankinja, chardonnay and laški rizling.

Wine blends–cuvée

Naturally, it has to be emphasized that the tasting of Slovenian varietal wines is only the beginning of the research of Slovenian wines; namely, a large share is also represented by wine blends, wines from several wine varieties– the French expression cuvee is used for such wines. The protected wine, cviček, from the wine-growing region of Posavje deserves special mention here. It is composed from red and white wine varieties. Every Slovenian wine-maker with a good reputation has at least one of his own cuvée, the recipe of which is known only by him.