The key to drinking and diving is to make sure the diving comes first. It’s an order of operations that Edivo Vina has perfected. They’re Croatia’s first and only underwater winery, and if you want your very own hand-selected, barnacle-encrusted, underwater-aged bottle of vino, you’re going to have to dive for it.

The alternative winery located in Croatia’s Peljesac peninsula is the brainchild of Edi Bajurin, who—it may not surprise you—combined his two favorite hobbies to create one unexpected venture. He speculated that aging wines at 20 meters (72 feet) underwater would keep them at a more constant temperature than on land and that the silence on the sea floor would impart his wines with a measurably smoother taste. 

Years of experimentation incurring no shortage of salty wine and perhaps a few drunken fish taught Bajurin that ordinary corks couldn’t keep the wine from the sea and vice versa. He began coating his corks in two layers of wax and aging the bottles in clay amphorae, which he submerges upside-down in custom-built cages that prevent thirsty divers from pilfering his product.

As such, each bottle of Edivo Vina’s “Navis Mysterium” (from the red plavac mali grape that grows along the Dalmatian coast) emerges from its 18-to-24-month aging stint with a distinct pinewood aroma and the amphorae uniquely coated in seashells and barnacles. While claims of sea-floor quietude translating into smoother wine lack scientific backing, Navis Mysterium consistently emerges with particularly fruity and spicy notes. 

If diving’s not for you, cozy up at the wine bar, on land. Let your friends get wet. It’s still the same wine.