The head of the Adriatic is the start or the end of a Croatian season rather than a cruising ground of its own, and it is where a lot of yachts change guests before turning south. Marina Santelena puts a yacht inside Venice itself, a short walk from the Giardini and the Arsenale; Marina San Giusto at Trieste sits under the old Habsburg waterfront with proper road access and none of the lagoon’s complications.

Venice deliveries need planning that other ports do not, for the obvious reason: the last leg is on water, the lagoon has rules about it, and there is no such thing as backing a van up to the passerelle. Trieste is the straightforward one and is only a few hours away by sea. We will be plain about which is the better landing point for a given delivery rather than promising both equally.

Orders ship from our French cellar on EU logistics, no customs frontier, duties and paperwork handled, typically two to three working days from confirmation. For a yacht heading down the Dalmatian coast this is the last full restock inside easy reach, and worth sizing for the whole run: Croatia is beautiful and its wine shops are not built for superyacht quantities.

The wines up here are the ones guests have not met. Friuli makes arguably Italy’s finest white wines, Collio and the Carso produce whites of real seriousness, and the orange wines of the Slovenian border are a talking point at a table that has seen everything. Prosecco’s good end, Cartizze and the Rive crus, comes from an hour inland rather than from a supermarket shelf.