December the 16th, 2025 – Croatia is home to a great many fascinating things, but not many realise that it is also the country that can boast of possessing the world’s largest wine barrel. For a little country that produces so many countless gallons of the stuff, it’s poetically fitting.
As Putni kofer writes, while still almost entirely overlooked in comparison to the coast, the islands, and to Zagreb, the vast, flat plains of eastern Croatia are home to many incredible things. From rich archaeology to agricultural history, to wine – the vast majority of it goes totally under the radar of tourists. The place where Slavonia, Baranja and Srijem meet is full of charming old towns, natural phenomena, historic castles and endless fertile vineyards. It’s precisely the vine that has marked the development of many places across eastern Croatia. For as much as Dalmatia is the old man and the sea, eastern Croatia is the farmer and his land. It’s precisely here that the largest barrel of wine in the entire world that is still in use today can be found.
croatia is the home of the world’s largest wine barrel, and you’ll find it in erdut
Erdut is a small Slavonian town close to the Serbian border and it’s absolutely full of interesting things. It’s a peninsula of sorts surrounded by the Danube and vineyards that are said to emerge from the river itself. The name Erdut translates to “apple” in Hungarian, and it’s home to a global phenomenon made of solid oak.
Erdut, a municipality that includes, in addition to Erdut itself, Bijelo Brdo, Aljmaš and Dalj, is surrounded on all three sides by the Danube, in places up to 800 metres wide by a river that, together with the Drava River, which it joins not far from the aforementioned Aljmaš, has always influenced life in the area. The same can be said about Erdut’s many vineyards, and they’re among the greatest treasures of the Erdut region by far. There are plenty of wineries in the area, and one of them truly stands out in this multitude, both in size and tradition. These are the Erdut Vineyards, one of the largest wineries in all of Croatia, the beginnings of which date back to 1730.
The Erdut Vineyards are also home to a completely unusual record holder and a secret not even many Croatia experts know about – the largest wine barrel in the world that is still very much in use. The barrel is truly incredible to see. You enter it through a door, and it stores an astonishing 75,000 litres of wine, which would fill about 100 thousand bottles.
It is made of thick, solid Slavonian oak, and there’s a pool of the same volume underneath it in case it ever starts leaking under the pressure. Much like any other, this wooden barrel likes to indulge in a little of the wine itself. This one consumes as much as 750 litres of wine a year!
Although the winery itself has a long history, the largest barrel in the world is of a far more recent date. During the construction of a new, modern facility in the 1980s, it was created as an instantly recognisable symbol of the entire Erdut wine region: the largest wine barrel in the world.
“The barrel was built from Slavonian oak in 1989 by DIK Đurđenovac. The barrel was built using the traditional method of splitting oak logs from a total of 109 oak trunks. The barrel has a total volume of 75,000 liters, which makes it the largest wine barrel in the world in use. The barrel is always full and there is always Graševina in it,” the Erdut Vineyards website states.
the erdut tower – an old construction with unclear origins…
The Erdut Tower is another fascinating point of interest in this eastern town. It is located at a height of 70 metres above the Danube and is likely getting a bit of a face lift soon. The tower dates back to the 14th century, and it was mentioned as a ruin as early as 1697. There are no actual records of who exactly built it and why, but it is believed that it was a military fortress and part of a wider old defence system. It also served as the tomb of the Adamović-Čeh family, who once owned the famous Erdut Winery.
