How to eat and drink your way around the Dubrovnik Riviera

‘I hope you’re hungry,’ crows a fisherman, setting down a plate piled high with freshly shucked oysters. They say you should face your worst fears head on. Well, here I am addressing mine – but I never thought it would be done in quite so idyllic a spot.

I’m in Mali Ston, a small, picturesque town on Croatia’s Pelješac peninsula, about an hour’s drive from Dubrovnik. It’s 9.30 a.m. and many shops are still shuttered, but already Game of Thrones fans are out in force, taking selfies along the hillside’s 14th-century network of towers and fortresses. (The three-and-a-half-mile walls doubled as King’s Landing and the Eyrie in the fantasy drama.) Yet I’m among fanatics of a different sort: wine buffs and foodies, taking a break from the more formal restaurants of Dubrovnik’s Old Town to sample the best of the Dalmatian coast’s cuisine at source. In a few hours’ time we’ll be heading west into the vineyard-strewn valleys to drink as much Dingač as we can at some of the region’s 40-plus wineries.