Couple the mystery of the sea with the romance of wine, and you have Navis Mysterium.

Navis Mysterium, which translated means “The Sea Mystery,” is a red wine that’s been aged for over 700 days in clay pots called amphoras, at the depths of the Adriatic Sea off the coast of Croatia.

The company that makes the wine, Edivo, is located in the small village of Drace on the Peljesac peninsula, a wine making region. The company says their mission is to “make top quality wines, but also to make them unique.” 

Most would agree, that winery owners Ivo Segovic and Edi Bajurin have achieved their goal.

But, making something this special was not without challenges…

Segovic and Bajurin, former bar owners, had an ambitious idea. They would make a wine and age it in a shipwreck at bottom of the sea, which offered the ideal wine aging temperature of 15 degree Celsius.

Their biggest challenge was how to make the wine bottles impenetratable by the sea water. They came up with a perfect solution: amphoras, ancient clay pots, with long bodies and side handles, historically used by the Greeks.

Explains company owners, “With the bottles, we immediately had good results, but the amphorae were more difficult. It was necessary to investigate whether it would be possible to put glass bottle directly in an amphora, because wine could lose quality from any penetration by the sea. Using a glass bottle of 0.75L that goes into a clay amphora, and protecting it with a good cork and two layers of rubber, we submerged it in the sea to a depth of 18-25 meters for more than 700 days. After that we knew that we had made something special, something what will make history….now we have the first underwater winery.”