The Vrbnik Wine Festival: A Guide to Dani vina Vrbnik, the Žlahtina Weekend on Krk

For two days in late August, Vrbnik stops being a quiet wine village on a cliff and becomes the capital of a grape that grows almost nowhere else. Dani vina Vrbnik — Vrbnik Wine Days — is the one event on Krk we tell every August guest to plan around. Here is what happens, how it works, and why staying eight minutes away on foot changes the whole experience.

What Dani vina Vrbnik is

The festival is Vrbnik celebrating Žlahtina, the white grape that has been grown in the valley behind the village for the better part of a thousand years and is still made almost nowhere else. It is organised by the Vrbnik tourist board, the municipality and the Kvarner Wines association, and in 2026 it reached its twentieth edition. The setting is the village itself: the main square, Trg Škujica, and the Placa fill with the tables of the producers, the streets behind them stay open late, and the cellars in the lanes open their doors.

It is not a trade show and it is not a party imported from somewhere else. The winemakers pouring are the families whose vineyards you drive past on the way in, and half the people at the tables are their neighbours. That is what makes it worth building a week around.

The programme, day by day

Friday. The morning belongs to the growers — an expert workshop at the cooperative, PZ Vrbnik. In the late afternoon there is a guided, ticketed tasting of Kvarner wines for those who want to sit down with a glass and an explanation. From seven in the evening the wine fair opens on the square: a dozen or more producers from Vrbnik and invited guests from other Croatian regions pour by the glass, the restaurants set up food, and there were free horse-carriage rides through the village for the twentieth edition. The official opening is at nine, followed by concerts — traditional klapa singing first, bands later — that run well past midnight.

Saturday. The Vrbnik Wine Walk leaves at nine in the morning: a guided route on foot through six wineries in and around the village, with a tasting at each — in 2026 the Katunar estate winery, the PZ Vrbnik cooperative, Ivan Katunar House of Wine, Gospoja, Nada and Šipun. Places are limited and registration is required, and they go quickly. In the evening the fair reopens on the square and the concerts continue until late.

Most of it is free. You pay for what you drink and eat at the stands; the guided tastings and the Wine Walk are ticketed.

Who pours

The names on the tables are the names on the cellar doors around Vrbnik. The Katunar family with two houses, the estate winery and Ivan Katunar House of Wine — the cellar we send guests to for tastings and the wine we serve at our own celebrations. The two cooperatives, PZ Vrbnik and Gospoja. Nada, restaurant and winery in one, on the edge of the old town. Šipun, Gršković, Kapić and Tohoraj — small family producers working a few hectares each. And guest producers from Slavonia in the east of Croatia, which makes the fair the one evening of the year when you can taste the whole country without leaving the square.

Žlahtina in five sentences

Žlahtina is an indigenous white grape grown almost exclusively in the Vrbnik field, the flat valley behind the village. It is documented here since the 11th century, in the records of the Frankopan castle archive. Most producers work small parcels — five to twelve hectares — which is why you rarely see the wine outside the island. It is dry, fresh and mineral, made to be drunk young and cold, and it belongs next to Adriatic fish or a plate of Krk šurlice with seafood. Our Žlahtina guide covers the cellars, the tastings and how to take bottles home.

How to do the festival well

• Arrive on the Thursday. The village is still calm, the pool is waiting, and you wake up on Friday already there.
• Book the Wine Walk the day registration opens. Tell us you want to do it and we send you the link as soon as the tourist board publishes it.
• Friday evening on the square. Eat from the stands rather than booking a restaurant; the point is to move between tables.
• Saturday morning walk, afternoon swim. Six cellars before lunch is a proper morning. The beach below the old town is the recovery.
• Sunday is for the wine valley. Take the Vespa or the car through the vineyards you tasted the night before — our Vespa routes from Vrbnik include the loop.
• Buy at the cellar, not the fair. The producers deliver to the villa and pack for the drive home.

Staying eight minutes away

This is where the villas change the experience. Villa Moana and Villa Manatis stand in the olive groves on the edge of Vrbnik, about eight minutes on foot from the old town. You walk down to the square, you walk back up under the stars, and nobody thinks about car keys. In the morning you are in your own pool while the village sleeps in. For a group of friends coming for the festival, the two villas together as the Estate sleep fourteen.

One honest warning: August is our busiest month and the festival weekend is booked earliest of all. If Dani vina Vrbnik is the plan, check the dates as soon as you know them — and if 2027 is already tight, write to us and we will tell you what is realistic.