The Medimurje region is one of Croatia's most underrated treasures, virtually ignored by tourists and untouched by the 1991 war. In the northwestern corner of Medimurje County, you can meander around hilly, winding roads that end in family wineries of varying sizes. Medimurje is a place where you can walk the land with its owner and taste the wine he made there. This is where you can sit on the deck of a hilltop restaurant and see Slovenia, Hungary, and Austria (and sometimes the hills of the Czech Republic) beyond the restaurant's Croatian vineyard. Medimurje's wine road is a relatively new feature in the area, though many of the wineries listed on the vina cesta map have been there for generations. However, the county is now promoting its assets to tourists. You can stop at any of the wineries on the map, and you'll be offered a glass of wine and the opportunity to buy a bottle or two. In some cases, the wine tasting is more formal, but this is like being in Napa, California, before it became popular. (Pick up a map to the wineries at the Cakovec or Strigova tourist offices.)
There is an order to things in Medimurje that isn't evident anywhere else in Croatia. People follow the tempo of planting and harvest times and they seem more in tune with nature than people in any other part of the country. Once you fall in step with the flow of things, you get it.
