Unfortunately, the members of the Cooperative found it unsatisfactory and eject ed it from the co-op membership for, what was, in their view, „disregard of rules“. In turn, the King’s Cellar was built according to the most renowned French examples of the time. Completed in 1931t, 45 meters long and 15.5 meters wide, it had two levels underground. It maintained a temperature of 8 C and was fully operationalfor the processing of grapes. In a separate compartment, there were six barrels ornamentedwith wood-carvings. Three were received by the King in 1922 as wedding gifts from his People - the Serbs, the Croats and the Slovenes and were inscribed with appropriate dedications to the Unifier. Of the remaining three, one, especially beautiful, was the barrel with the initials „P.D.J“ in its the middle sect ion presented to the King’s father, King Petar I, by Petar D. Jokic, a descendant of the glorious Karadjordje’s buljubasa. Another, presented to the King by Prince Andrija Jokic of Jasenica, was inscribed with verses: “One who does not know that red wine is to be drunk / Is a man for whom his country has nothing tothank”.

The majority of barrels in other rooms were made in Nasice (Djurdjenovac) and decorated by Tulius Roller in 1931. A special chamber contained twenty barrels intended for old assorted wines, while the compartment for storage of bottled wine was situated on the opposite side. Adjacent to the elevator and the staircase were valuable samples of wines produced by the Cellar. Initially, a special permit was required for the sale of wine coming from the King’s Cellar. Subsequently, they were sold in distinctive bottles in three sizes with concave bottoms and the Royal Coat of Arms.

The wine fund was preserved during World War II by the ingenuity of one of the Cellar workers, a peasant farmer from the village of Bozurnja, Dragoslav Filipovic, nicknamed Mitula. He saved the complete wine fund by placing it into a single barrel in which he had made a secret compartment.

The Court documents tell that the wine fund, among other, contained “100 bottles of wine that are never to be sold, but preserved for history” and 30 bottles left for special occasions. The wine varieties of the fund included Oplenka, Zilavka, Triumph, Hamburg and Riesling which were set aside in March 1931. Along with the wines, it contained samples of that year’s grape brandy, known among Serbs as rakija.

When extending their estates on Oplenac, Kings Petar I and Aleksandar did not only buy plots under grapevine, but also planted new ones, creating new vineyards, thus gradually turning the eastern slope of Oplenac into a single mountainous vineyard. In total, the land under grapevine extended over 37, 7831 acres. The vineyard included two nurseries, in which new varieties and clusters were processed and select ed with much skill. Four-fifths belonged to wine varieties and one to the table wines. The nurseries supplied winegrowers with grafts (experimental estates, schools of agriculture, landowners etc). As demand was high, the available grafts were equally distributed among all interest ed winemakers.