Croatia is a wine country where scale is not the main story. Its wine sector is smaller than those of the largest European producers, but it is highly distinctive: rooted in coastal and continental regions, known for indigenous varieties, connected to tourism and local identity, and structured around a mixture of registered producers, family farms, wine-making companies and micro-producers.

In the 2024/2025 campaign, European Commission Member State estimates placed Croatian wine production at 458,159 hectolitres, close to the previous campaign but below the five-year average of 545,220 hectolitres. The same source shows that most of the estimated 2024/2025 production was PDO wine. [1]

Public financial data reported by FINA and summarised by SeeNews show 275 wine-making enterprises in 2023, with EUR 141.9 million in combined revenue and 1,542 employees; a separate group of 116 winegrowers reported EUR 48 million in revenue and 649 employees. [4]

For the Grapes of Change Observatory, this means that Croatia should not be read only through production volume. It should be read as a small and identity-driven wine ecosystem where prevention must reach many types of actors: wineries, growers, family farms, cellars, wine tourism settings, restaurants, festivals, regional associations, distribution channels and support services.

The available evidence does not provide official wine-sector-specific data on women-owned wineries, women-managed wineries, women in wine-company boards, workplace harassment, GBV cases or company-level reporting mechanisms. This absence should be treated as an Observatory finding.

Croatia shows why visibility is not only a communications issue. If women’s roles in wine are present in practice but absent from public data, they remain harder to protect, support and promote.

The annual focus of this report is therefore: making protection visible. Croatia’s wine identity is strong; the next step is to ensure that women’s safety, voice and leadership become part of that identity.

Central Observatory question for Croatia

How can a small, fragmented and identity-driven wine sector make women’s work, leadership, safety and access to support visible across the whole wine supply chain?

A small wine ecosystem with a long route to prevention

Croatia should be read as a wine ecosystem rather than as a list of wine producers. The sector includes grape growers, wine-making enterprises, family wineries, micro-producers, regional associations, restaurants, wine bars, tourism operators, festivals, distributors, journalists, sommeliers and public institutions responsible for agriculture, equality and victim support.

This matters for gender-based violence (GBV) prevention because the Croatian wine workplace is not always a standard office or a single formal employer. It can be a vineyard, a cellar, a family business, a tasting room, a tourist route, a restaurant, a fair or a seasonal harvest setting. Each setting creates different visibility, dependency and reporting conditions.

Croatia also illustrates a common challenge for the Observatory: the available public data can describe production, categories of wine, corporate financial performance and broad sector identity more easily than it can describe women’s ownership, management, working conditions or access to protection. This does not prevent a strong Country Report; it changes the report’s task. The task is to show what is visible, what is fragmented, and what should be monitored next.

Croatia in brief


A sector of local identity, micro-producers and data-definition gaps

Croatia’s public evidence base contains several useful but non-identical ways of counting the sector. Vina Croatia’s sector-facing statistical profile lists 1,575 wine producers, 19,583 hectares of vineyard area and annual production of 640,000 hectolitres, but these figures are dated 2017 or 2017/2018. [3] FINA-based company data, by contrast, identifies 275 wine-making enterprises and 116 winegrowers in 2023. [4] These two figures should not be treated as contradictory; they count different parts of the ecosystem.

This distinction is important for the Observatory. A registered producer, a family farm, a winegrower, a micro-winery and a corporate wine-making enterprise may all belong to the wine economy, but they do not have the same organisational capacity. A large company may be able to formalise HR policies and reporting channels. A family producer may need templates, training and external support. A seasonal harvest team may need simple information on rights and support services. A wine tourism venue may need prevention rules for customer-facing work and late-hour settings.

Croatia’s identity-driven character is also a strength. Vina Croatia identifies the main wine regions as Slavonia and the Croatian Danube, Croatian Uplands, Istria and Kvarner, and Dalmatia, and highlights Graševina, Istrian Malvasia and Plavac Mali as main varieties. [3] These regional and varietal identities can help prevention messages travel through trusted local networks rather than only through national-level legal language.

Women in Croatian wine: present in practice, not yet visible in public statistics

The available public data does not provide an official wine-sector-specific count of women-owned wineries or women-managed wineries. The same applies to women in wine-company boards, women in appellation or sector governance, women in seasonal viticulture work, and women’s access to company-level reporting mechanisms.

Broader Croatian data can provide context but should not be used as wine-sector evidence. Recent analysis cited by the World Bank notes that, in 2023, 21.4% of registered companies in Croatia were exclusively owned by women, with a further 9.1% co-owned by women. [15] A recent Croatian academic article similarly cites 21.4% of companies exclusively owned by women and notes that women owned 28.62% of family farms in 2024 according to Farmers’ Register data. [16] These figures are useful proxies for entrepreneurship and rural ownership, but they do not replace wine-sector-specific data.

For the Observatory, the most responsible conclusion is therefore not that women are absent from Croatian wine. The responsible conclusion is that women’s presence is not yet sufficiently measured. This is exactly where a national Country Report can add value: by turning invisibility into a monitoring priority.

Data transparency: what can be seen and what remains invisible

The report can describe Croatia’s production estimate, production category breakdown, corporate wine-making enterprises, revenue and employment in FINA-covered entities, wine regions, indigenous varieties, support services and legal framework. It cannot yet provide a reliable public measure of women’s ownership or management in the wine sector, GBV and harassment cases in wine workplaces, pay gaps, seasonal-worker vulnerability, reporting-channel coverage or the presence of anti-harassment policies in wineries.

This limitation is not a weakness of the report. It is part of the Observatory agenda. Croatia’s next Country Report should aim to move from general sector visibility to more specific monitoring of women’s roles, workplace culture and support access.

Rights, duties and practical reach

Croatia has a legal and institutional framework covering gender equality, discrimination, workplace harassment, sexual harassment, domestic abuse and victims’ rights. For the wine sector, the key question is practical reach: how can rights and support pathways become visible in small companies, family wineries, seasonal work settings, wine tourism and regional supply-chain networks?

Equality, discrimination and sexual harassment

The Gender Equality Act is the central legal framework for gender equality in Croatia. EIGE describes it as establishing the protection and promotion of gender equality as a fundamental value and ensuring the application of the equality principle across national policy. [8]

The Act itself defines direct and indirect discrimination and states that harassment and sexual harassment are deemed discrimination. It defines harassment as unwanted conduct related to a person’s sex that violates dignity and creates an unpleasant, hostile, degrading or offensive environment; sexual harassment is unwanted verbal, non-verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature with the same purpose or effect. [9]

This is important for wine-sector actors because harassment prevention is not optional culture work. It is linked to the legal protection of dignity and equality. In a small sector, however, formal rights must be translated into language and procedures that a winery owner, cellar manager, harvest supervisor, sommelier trainer, tourism operator or family business can realistically use.

Protection of employees’ dignity at work

Croatia’s Labour Act contains specific provisions on the protection of employees’ dignity. Article 130 provides that procedures and measures for protecting employees against harassment or sexual harassment are regulated through law, collective agreement, works council agreement or employment rules.

Employers with more than 20 employees must appoint a person authorised to receive and deal with complaints related to the protection of dignity. The same article requires complaints to be examined and appropriate measures taken no later than eight days after the complaint is filed, and states that information collected in the procedure is confidential. [10]

For larger wine companies, this framework can translate into appointed complaint handlers, written procedures, manager training and clear anti-retaliation messages. For smaller companies, the most useful approach may be shared templates, sector-level guidance, cooperation with associations and external signposting to support services.

Violence against women, domestic abuse and victims’ rights

The Croatian public-services portal gov.hr provides information on domestic abuse, including reporting routes and the role of social welfare centres, police, the state attorney’s office and support organisations. It also explains that victims of domestic abuse can access advice, assistance and support through an address book of institutions and organisations providing help, support and protection. [11]

The gov.hr page on victims’ rights explains that victims have rights in criminal proceedings, including information on rights, professional help from organisations helping victims, protection from intimidation and retaliation, protection of dignity during witness examination and special rights for victims of sexual offences and human trafficking. [12]

The legal context has also continued to evolve. In 2024, the Croatian Ministry of Justice, Public Administration and Digital Transformation noted amendments to the Criminal Code, Criminal Procedure Act and Protection against Domestic Violence Act, including the introduction of femicide as a new criminal offence and the definition of gender-based violence in the general provisions of the Criminal Code. [14]

Support and signposting

The Observatory is not an emergency service or an individual complaint mechanism. Its role is to make information visible and connect sector stakeholders with appropriate services.

Croatia has a national support line: the National Call Centre for Victims of Crime and Misdemeanours, 116 006, which the Ministry describes as free, anonymous, available across Croatia, and operating in Croatian and English. [13]

Public portals also direct users to victim and witness support organisations, including the Women’s Room – Centre for Victims of Sexual Violence and other county-level and civil-society services. [21]

For the Croatian wine sector, this support information should be made visible where women actually work and learn: in wineries, farms, restaurants, wine tourism settings, festivals, wine schools, regional events and producer associations.

The most important practical step is simple: every workplace and training environment should know where to refer someone who needs help, support or confidential advice.

Five findings for the Croatian Observatory profile

1. The wine sector is easier to describe economically than socially

Croatia has useful public evidence on production estimates, PDO production, company revenue, wine regions and trade. It has much weaker public evidence on women’s ownership, women’s management, harassment, GBV incidents, reporting channels and workplace equality practice in the wine sector.

Why this matters: a sector can be culturally visible and still socially under-measured. If women’s roles are not counted, they are harder to protect, promote and include in policy design.

Stakeholder implication: future Observatory updates should prioritise gender-disaggregated data collection, especially on ownership, management, employment type, seasonal labour and access to reporting mechanisms.

2. Different datasets count different parts of the sector

Vina Croatia’s public sector profile lists 1,575 wine producers, while FINA-based company data identifies 275 wine-making enterprises and 116 winegrowers in 2023. [3, 4] These are not the same indicator. They reflect different definitions and institutional datasets.

Why this matters: prevention strategies depend on who is being counted. A corporate enterprise, a family farm, a registered producer, a grower and a micro-winery may need different tools.

Stakeholder implication: the Observatory should clearly label each dataset by scope and should not merge producer counts, corporate counts and family-farm counts without explanation.

3. Small-scale and family-based structures require SME-compatible prevention

Croatian wine is strongly associated with small producers, local identity and family entrepreneurship. Public data does not provide a complete current classification of wine-sector company size, but the sector is repeatedly described as fragmented and composed of many small actors.

Why this matters: long policies and complex compliance language may not reach small wineries or family businesses. Prevention tools must be short, practical and adapted to the daily reality of small workplaces.

Stakeholder implication: associations, BSOs, chambers and regional wine bodies can help translate legal obligations into checklists, short training modules, reporting templates and referral pathways.

4. Wine tourism expands both opportunity and risk

Croatia’s wine identity is closely linked to gastronomy, tourism, coastal and inland routes, festivals, tastings and regional storytelling. This expands the workplace beyond the cellar and vineyard.

Why this matters: customer-facing settings, events, travel, late hours and informal networking can create harassment risks that are not addressed by vineyard or winery policies alone.

Stakeholder implication: prevention messages should cover wine tourism, tastings, restaurants, festivals, distribution visits and events, not only production sites.

5. Women’s visibility needs a path into leadership and protection

Broader Croatian data suggests women are present in entrepreneurship and family farm ownership, but wine-specific public data is missing. [15, 16] Without sector-specific measurement, women’s participation may remain visible only through individual stories rather than structural indicators.

Why this matters: visibility without measurement does not automatically lead to power, safety or accountability.

Stakeholder implication: the next monitoring cycle should ask not only how many women are present, but where they hold authority, whether they can report safely, and whether support services are reachable in wine-producing regions.

Croatia data snapshot

Reading Croatia through production, identity and data gaps

The Croatian data snapshot should be read in two layers. The first layer is quantitative: production estimates, production categories, company-financial data and trade. The second layer is diagnostic: data-definition gaps and missing gender-disaggregated indicators. Both layers are necessary for a responsible Observatory profile.

Wine production estimate and quality categories


The category breakdown shows that the Croatian 2024/2025 estimate is overwhelmingly PDO-based. For the Observatory, this is a useful entry point: a sector that builds value around origin and protected identity can also connect quality and reputation with visible workplace standards.

Company-financial structure


This table should be used carefully. It does not describe every family producer or registered wine actor in Croatia. It does show, however, that a measurable corporate layer exists and can be targeted for workplace policies, complaint procedures and training.

Sector identity indicators


Croatia’s wine sector is distinctive because of place, variety and identity. This can make prevention messages more credible when they are framed as part of sector quality, not as an external administrative burden.

Women-related evidence and proxies


Data visibility matrix


Prevention touchpoints


From evidence to action

The Croatian profile points to one practical conclusion: prevention should travel through identity and networks. National law gives rights and duties, but small-sector implementation depends on regional associations, producer networks, chambers, tourism actors, education providers, local authorities and support organisations.


Official statistics and wine-sector data

Wine-sector organisations and regional information

Legal and institutional resources

Support services and GBV information

References

  1. European Commission. Wine production estimates EU 2024/2025. Production estimates report
  2. European Commission. Wine Market Observatory. Wine Market Observatory
  3. Vina Croatia. Statistical Data. Statistical profile
  4. SeeNews. Croatian wine makers’ net profit up 142% in 2023 – FINA. SeeNews article
  5. Observatory of Economic Complexity. Wine in Croatia trade. Trade data
  6. Croatian Bureau of Statistics. Wine balance sheet. Official statistics
  7. Croatian Bureau of Statistics. Vineyard structure – main wine-grape vine varieties. Vineyard structure statistics
  8. European Institute for Gender Equality. Croatia: gender mainstreaming country profile. EIGE country profile
  9. Government Office for Gender Equality. Act on Gender Equality, English text. Legal text
  10. ILO NATLEX. Labour Act of Croatia, English text. Labour Act
  11. gov.hr. Domestic abuse. Public information
  12. gov.hr. Rights of victims. Victims’ rights
  13. Ministry of Justice, Public Administration and Digital Transformation. National Call Centre for Victims of Crime – 116 006. National support line
  14. Ministry of Justice, Public Administration and Digital Transformation. International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. Ministry information
  15. World Bank. Breaking Barriers: Empowering Women in Croatia’s Workforce. World Bank report
  16. Hrčak. Motivational Factors of Female Entrepreneurs in Rural Areas. Academic article
  17. Women’s Room – Centre for Victims of Sexual Violence. Organisation website
  18. Autonomous Women’s House Zagreb. Organisation website
  19. B.a.B.e. Organisation website
  20. SOS Rijeka – Centre for Nonviolence and Human Rights. Organisation website
  21. Ministry of Justice, Public Administration and Digital Transformation. Victim and witness support organisations in Croatia. Support organisations directory
  22. WAVE Network. Croatia. Country profile