Vinakoper

 Sečovlje Salt-pans

Typical Istrian wine cellar is built of the typical Istrian limestone. The largest portion of the cellar has been built inside the slope of the Hill of Škocjan, while the ground floor has been completely entrenched into the soil. Natural construction materials offer many advantages; the most important of all is the relatively constant temperature inside the cellar. Annual temperature swings therefore do not exceed 10°C.
Summer temperatures are never higher than 18°C, while in winter they never fall below 8°C, thus creating the best conditions for ageing and storing the wines. 

Cultural heritage of the salt-pans reflect the life and work of salters from the North-East Adriatic coast in the last century. The oldest heritage can be seen in the basins called Fontanigge, where the ruins of salt-pan houses, traces of salt fields, banks and channels testify of once existing Piran salt-pans, active until the 1960s. Mobile cultural heritage of the old Piran salt-pans is preserved, protected and presented at the Museum of Saltmaking by the channel Giassi. From once numerous salt-pans in the Gulf of Trieste only those in Sečovlje and Strunjan have remained, therefore their testimony is even more precious. 

They represent ethnological, technical, historical, urban, and landscape heritage of extreme importance. Immovable cultural heritage includes salt fields (active and abandoned), channels and banks with stone walls, stairs and barriers (only stone parts are preserved), salt-pan houses with the surrounding (also their ruins and locations), paths, bridges, pumps etc.
Sečovlje salt-pans are the only salt-pans along the east coast of the Adriatic sea, where they use traditional approach in the whole process and produce salt by daily harvesting in salt water where the salters cultivate so called petola - a special type of biosediment.