The short version#
South Moravia is the wine country I live in. Brno, Czechia’s second city, sits at its northern edge, and within an hour or so of my door lie most of the country’s roughly 17,000 hectares of vines, more than 13,000 registered growers and four official sub-regions. Czechia makes less than half the wine its own citizens drink, exports little, and labels its grapes with Czech names that nobody outside the country recognises. That is the whole reason it gets missed, and it is also why a cellar visit here still feels like being let in on something. What follows is the orientation I give guests on the first evening.
Why nobody comes#
Three reasons, none of them about quality.
The first is scale. Czech vineyards cover about 17,000 hectares, 96 percent of them in Moravia, and domestic production covers roughly 45 percent of what the country drinks, so there has never been a surplus to push abroad. The structure is smallholder to the core.
The second is history. Vines have grown here since the Roman Tenth Legion had a base at Mušov under the Pálava hills in the second century, and Charles IV was issuing decrees on vineyard planting in 1358. But collectivisation after 1948 swallowed the family plots, and most of the small estates you can visit today either regained their land in the restitutions of 1989 to 1992 or were founded after them.
The third is language. Grüner Veltliner is Veltlínské zelené here, Blaufränkisch is Frankovka, Welschriesling is Ryzlink vlašský. I translate below.
The lie of the land#
Moravia’s four sub-regions fan out south and south-east of Brno towards the Austrian border. Mikulov is the largest at 4,876 hectares, then Velké Pavlovice with 4,580, Slovácko with 4,065 and Znojmo with 3,069. Bohemia, the country’s other wine region, has 675 hectares around Mělník and Litoměřice north of Prague, a day trip from the capital rather than part of this circuit.
Drive times from Brno: Velké Pavlovice 40 minutes, Mikulov 50, Znojmo an hour, Uherské Hradiště in Slovácko an hour. The Czechia guide takes the sub-regions one by one.
Pálava: limestone, Welschriesling and a grape named after a hill#
If you have one day, spend it under Pálava. The hills are a short ridge of Jurassic limestone belonging to the outer Western Carpathians, rising to 549 metres at Děvín and dropping towards the Nové Mlýny reservoirs, three lakes dammed between 1978 and 1988 that now moderate spring frost. The ridge has been a protected landscape since 1976 and a UNESCO biosphere reserve since 1986.
The flagship grape here is Ryzlink vlašský, Welschriesling, which is not related to Riesling. On Pálava limestone it turns saline and firm, with a green-almond bitterness I did not expect from the variety. Vinařství Volařík in Mikulov bottles more than ten separate lots of it a year from different sites. The Mikulov guide has more on the estate and the slope.
The other name to learn is Pálava, a grape as well as a hill. Josef Veverka crossed Tramín červený, which is Gewürztraminer, with Müller-Thurgau in 1953; the work moved from Velké Pavlovice to the Perná breeding station under the ridge, and the variety was registered in 1977. It smells of rose petals and honey, keeps its acidity and is usually made off-dry. Sonberk at Popice, 40 hectares of loess facing the hills with the reservoirs below, has built its name on it and dries Pálava on racks for about five months to make a straw wine. I visit the estate in its own story.
A glossary of grapes#
Whites: Veltlínské zelené is Grüner Veltliner, peppery, the Znojmo signature. Ryzlink rýnský is Riesling. Rulandské bílé, šedé and modré are Pinot Blanc, Gris and Noir. Tramín červený is Gewürztraminer, Neuburské is Neuburger, and Müller-Thurgau keeps its name and makes the everyday white. Muškát moravský is a Czech-bred Muscat found in a great many of the region’s pet-nats.
Reds: Frankovka is Blaufränkisch, the backbone of Velké Pavlovice. Svatovavřinecké is St. Laurent. Zweigeltrebe is Zweigelt. Modrý Portugal is Blauer Portugieser, light and drunk young. André is a local cross of Frankovka and Svatovavřinecké bred at Velké Pavlovice in 1961. Once you have those, a Moravian wine list stops looking like a spelling test.
How to read the label#
Czech wine law uses a German-style ladder of must weights. Above the base jakostní víno, wines “s přívlastkem” carry a predicate: kabinetní from 19 degrees on the Czech must scale, pozdní sběr (late harvest) from 21, výběr z hroznů from 24, then výběr z bobulí, ice wine and straw wine from 27, and výběr z cibéb, from shrivelled berries, at 32. The predicate tells you ripeness at harvest, not sweetness in the bottle; many pozdní sběr wines are dry.
Alongside this runs VOC, Vína originální certifikace, appellations run by producer associations with a tasting panel and a short list of permitted varieties. VOC Znojmo came first in 2009 and admits only Sauvignon, Ryzlink rýnský and Veltlínské zelené; VOC Mikulov and VOC Modré Hory followed in 2011, VOC Pálava in 2012.
The cellar lanes#
Moravia’s signature is the sklepní ulička, the cellar lane: a row of press houses at street level with cellars bored into the loess or sandstone behind them. Velké Bílovice, the country’s largest wine village, has 748 hectares of vines and more than a thousand registered growers, which means nearly every household owns a cellar. Nový Šaldorf outside Znojmo has more than 180 cellar structures along an 800-metre lane cut into sandstone streaked with blue-grey clay, hence the name Modré sklepy, blue cellars. Petrov-Plže in Slovácko has about 80 cellars first recorded in the fifteenth century, whitewashed and skirted in blue.
In a lane like this the host pours from the barrel with a koštýř, a long glass pipette, and the food is bread, lard, škvarky (pork crackling) and smoked meat. A tasting is not a flight of six numbered glasses. It is an afternoon.
Pet-nat, autentisté and the classic estates#
Moravia has the densest natural-wine scene in the country, most of it within 45 minutes of Brno in the Velké Pavlovice villages. The growers’ own word is not natural but autentické, and on 28 October 2011 seven of them signed the Autentisté charter: no herbicides or synthetic sprays, yields capped at 50 hectolitres a hectare, hand harvest, spontaneous fermentation, and sulfur held below 100 mg/l for whites and 80 for reds. Petr Koráb in Boleradice makes pet-nats and traditional-method sparkling in a single arch bored about 100 metres into the hillside, and I write about his cellar in its own story.
Outside the association but in the same circle, Milan Nestarec in Velké Bílovice is the name foreign sommeliers know. Around 95 percent of his wine leaves the country, and his pet-nat Danger 380 Volts, a blend of Müller-Thurgau, Neuburské and Muškát moravský, is the Moravian label I most often see on lists abroad; I tell his story separately.
Pet-nat suits this place: Muškát moravský and Müller-Thurgau are aromatic, early to ripen and content at modest alcohol, and a bottle finished under a crown cap is within reach of any family with a press. My pet-nat article walks through the method.
The classic camp is just as strong. Sonberk and Volařík under Pálava, and Vinselekt Michlovský at Rakvice, where Miloš Michlovský, a vine breeder with eight winemaking textbooks to his name, plants only above 10,000 vines per hectare, work in steel with controlled fermentation and measured sulfur, and it is estates like these that fill the Salon vín, the national selection of 100 gold-medal wines shown in the chateau cellars at Valtice. I pour both camps on the same table, for reasons laid out in what I pour: the comparison teaches more than either wine alone.
What is on the table#
Moravian food is built for these wines. Roast duck with red cabbage and dumplings wants Frankovka or Svatovavřinecké. Fried carp with potato salad, the Christmas dish, is the classic match for Ryzlink vlašský. Semi-dry Pálava is what locals pour with blue cheese and apricot dumplings, and Olomoucké tvarůžky, the pungent ripened curd cheese from Olomouc, meets Tramín. Two dates matter: roast goose with red cabbage and lokše potato flatbread on 11 November, when the young Svatomartinské wines are opened at 11:00 sharp, and burčák, the partly fermented must sold at the September harvest festivals, drunk with koláče pastries and grilled sausage.
When to go#
May and June for green vineyards and the open-cellar weekends most villages hold. September for harvest and burčák; the Pálavské vinobraní in Mikulov and the historical vinobraní in Znojmo fall on the same second weekend, and beds go months ahead. October for golden vines and cellar work, 11 November for the goose. From December to March the cellars hold 10 to 12 °C, tastings are by appointment and you will have the winemaker to yourself.
Summer days run 25 to 32 °C, September 15 to 24 with cool nights. Czechia uses the koruna, cards work in most cellars, and the drink-drive limit is zero, which is the strongest argument I know for a minibus.
On tour#
The South Moravia weekend is built from Brno around this circuit: Pálava limestone, the Velké Pavlovice cellar villages and Znojmo. The Moravia day tour from Brno is for anyone passing between Vienna and Prague. Both put a limestone Ryzlink vlašský next to a village pet-nat and let the group argue. If you want a cellar lane to yourselves, I build private routes from Brno through the year.
