The wine country I live in#
I live in Brno, and the nearest cellars of South Moravia are half an hour south of my door. Czechia grows about 17,000 hectares of vines, and 96 percent of them run in a band along the Austrian and Slovak borders. The rest, under 700 hectares, sits far to the north on the river slopes of Bohemia around Mělník.
This is a white-wine country, roughly two bottles in three, and a country of smallholders: some 13,000 registered growers in Moravia alone, most with a few rows and a cellar under a press house. The village cellar lane, whitewashed press houses above tunnels bored into loess or sandstone, is where Moravian wine is actually drunk, from the barrel, through a glass pipette, with bread and lard on a plank table.
Czechs also drink far more wine than they grow, so almost nothing leaves the country; a few natural-wine names, Milan Nestarec first among them, sell nearly everything abroad, and everyone else sells to Prague, Brno and whoever rings the cellar bell. The good bottles are here, and mostly only here.
From the Tenth Legion to the 2004 wine law#
The Tenth Legion kept a base at Mušov under the Pálava hills in the second century AD, and Czech histories place the first Moravian vines there. Vines grew at Mělník by the ninth century, and in 1358 Charles IV ordered vineyards planted around Prague and the royal towns and brought Burgundian vines to Mělník, which is why the best Bohemian red is still Pinot Noir.
Then centuries of village viticulture and, in 1896, a Paris gold medal for Blatnický roháč, the first foreign award for a Moravian wine. From 1948 collectivisation took the family plots into cooperatives; they came back only after 1989, so most estates I visit took their present form after that. The 2004 wine act drew today’s map of two regions, Morava and Čechy, and six sub-regions. VOC Znojmo, the first appellation run by the producers themselves, followed in 2009, and on 28 October 2011 seven winemakers signed the Autentisté charter.
Grapes: Welschriesling, Veltliner, Pálava and Frankovka#
The labels are in Czech, so here is the short dictionary. Ryzlink vlašský is Welschriesling, no relation to Riesling, and on Pálava limestone it becomes the country’s most serious dry white: lean, saline, a touch bitter at the finish, better at three years than at one. Veltlínské zelené is Grüner Veltliner, white pepper and green apple, the Znojmo signature and the everyday white of the cellar lanes. Ryzlink rýnský is the true Riesling.
Pálava is the grape you will not meet anywhere else: a crossing of Tramín červený (Gewürztraminer) and Müller-Thurgau made by Josef Veverka in 1953, finished at the Perná breeding station under the hills, registered in 1977 and named after them. Rose petal, honey and spice, usually off-dry, sometimes dried on racks into straw wine.
Reds are a quarter of the story but the heart of one sub-region. Frankovka is Blaufränkisch: mid-weight, peppery, sour cherry, the backbone of Velké Pavlovice. Svatovavřinecké (St. Laurent) is softer and darker; Modrý Portugal (Blauer Portugieser) is light, early and the wine for the St Martin’s goose.
The regions#
Mikulov and Pálava#
The Pálava hills are a ridge of Jurassic limestone rising to 549 metres at Děvín out of flat farmland, with the Nové Mlýny reservoirs at their feet and Mikulov at the southern end. Mikulov is the largest sub-region, about 4,900 hectares, and the warmest: limestone rubble under the ridge, deep loess at Popice and Dolní Dunajovice, and the home ground of Ryzlink vlašský and Pálava. Sonberk at Popice, Josef Pleskot’s 2008 winery on 40 hectares of loess facing the hills, is where I usually start. Fifty minutes from Brno.
Znojmo and Podyjí#
West along the Austrian border, Znojmo is cooler and windier, on the granite and gneiss of the Bohemian Massif. About 3,100 hectares, mostly white: Veltlínské zelené, Sauvignon and Ryzlink rýnský, the three grapes VOC Znojmo permits. Šobes, some 12 hectares on a rocky bend of the Dyje inside the Podyjí national park, is reached on foot. Nový Šaldorf’s blue cellars, more than 180 of them cut into sandstone veined with blue-grey clay along an 800-metre lane, hold the tasting room of Dobrá Vinice, whose buried Georgian qvevri are still a rarity in Moravia. An hour from Brno.
Velké Pavlovice and the Blue Hills#
North-east of Mikulov, Velké Pavlovice is the red-wine sub-region: about 4,600 hectares of rolling loess and Velké Bílovice, the largest wine municipality in the country, where nearly every household has vines and a cellar. The Modré Hory, the Blue Hills of Velké Pavlovice, Bořetice, Vrbice, Kobylí and Němčičky, take their name from the share of dark grapes. This is also the densest natural-wine country in Czechia: Milan Nestarec in Velké Bílovice, Petr Koráb at Boleradice, Richard Stávek at Němčičky, Ota Ševčík on Bořetice’s Kraví hora, a cellar hill that has declared itself a free republic with its own passports. Forty minutes from Brno.
Slovácko#
East towards the Slovak border and the White Carpathians, Slovácko is the folkloric sub-region: about 4,100 hectares over 118 villages, cimbalom bands and embroidered costumes at the autumn hody feasts. Petrov’s Plže, some 80 cellars in white lime and blue skirting; Mutěnice’s búdy, nearly 500 of them; Blatnice under the Antonínek chapel, home of the Blatnický roháč blend. Whites here are fuller and riper, Bzenec makes Riesling and sekt, and Krásná hora at Starý Poddvorov farms five hectares organically, Pinots first among them. An hour from Brno.
Bohemia#
Two and three-quarter hours north, Bohemia is another country: under 700 hectares along the Labe, Vltava and Ohře at the northern limit of Czech vine growing. Mělník’s chateau stands on terraced vines above the meeting of the Vltava and the Labe, and the Lobkowicz family has made wine there since 1753, with a gap of some four decades after 1948. Kutná Hora has a biodynamic cellar, certified since 2014; Prague keeps six small vineyards inside the city. Lighter, higher-acid whites and delicate Pinot Noir; a day out of Prague, not a Brno base.
Natural and classic in Moravia today#
The Czech scene does not say “natural”; it says autentické víno, and the association is called Autentisté. Its 2011 charter is stricter than most: no herbicides or synthetic sprays, yields capped at 50 hectolitres a hectare, hand harvest, spontaneous fermentation, and sulfur under 100 milligrams a litre in whites and 80 in reds. The Korábs, Stávek and Ševčík are among the members. Beside the association work Nestarec, Dobrá Vinice with its qvevri, and Krásná hora on the organic-biodynamic middle ground. Pet-nat and skin-contact whites are common enough here that nobody explains them any more.
The classic camp is larger and, on its day, as good. Sonberk and Vinařství Volařík under Pálava make precise, reductive whites in steel; Volařík bottles more than ten separate lots of Ryzlink vlašský a year. Vinselekt Michlovský at Rakvice is run by Miloš Michlovský, a vine breeder and academic with eight winemaking textbooks to his name, and his wines taste like the textbooks: exact.
What I like about Moravia is how close the two camps sit. Many classic estates farm organically; many Autentisté sell to the same Prague restaurants as Sonberk. On my tables a Volařík Ryzlink vlašský stands next to a Nestarec field blend from some 30 kilometres away, and the guests do the arguing.
What arrives on the table#
Cellar food first, because most of our tastings happen underground: rye bread, škvarky (pork crackling), lard with onion, smoked meat, cheese, and in autumn burčák, half-fermented must sold for a few weeks that goes down faster than it should. Vepřo knedlo zelo, roast pork with bread dumplings and cabbage, is the national plate; svíčková, beef in a cream sauce with cranberries, the Sunday one. Roast duck with red cabbage wants Frankovka or Svatovavřinecké.
Ryzlink vlašský with fried carp at Christmas; Veltlínské zelené with řízek; Znojmo Sauvignon with the asparagus of Ivančice in May. Off-dry Pálava is the surprise: blue cheese, apricot dumplings, or something hot and spicy. At 11:00 on 11 November the whole country opens Svatomartinské, the young wine of the vintage, and eats roast goose with red cabbage and lokše. Straw wine comes with koláče, or by itself.
When to go and how to get there#
Late April to June brings the otevřené sklepy, open-cellar weekends when a village unlocks thirty or forty cellars for one ticket. September is harvest and burčák, with the Pálavské vinobraní in Mikulov and the historic vinobraní in Znojmo on the same second weekend, when beds sell out months ahead. October is quiet, golden and my favourite month for a private group. From December to March the cellars sit at 10 to 12 degrees, tastings are by appointment and you have the winemaker to yourself.
Vienna’s airport is the practical gateway: about 1 h 15 to Mikulov, 1 h 45 to Brno. Prague is 2 h 15 to 2 h 30 by motorway to Brno and 40 minutes to Mělník. Czechia is in the EU and Schengen but not the eurozone; cards work almost everywhere, most cellars included. The drink-driving limit is zero, so we move by minibus with a driver, and I keep the tasting notes rather than the wheel.
How I tour Czechia#
My scheduled South Moravia weekend starts and ends in Brno and puts the Pálava limestone, the Blue Hills and a Znojmo cellar into a few days, natural and classic on alternate tables. The Moravia day tour from Brno gets guests passing through the city into cellars within an hour and back for dinner. I speak Czech, which at a cellar door changes what gets poured.
Austria’s Weinviertel begins where Znojmo’s vineyards stop, and the Wachau is two and a half hours from Brno, so I often join the two countries in one route. If you have a particular cellar in mind, or four days and a taste for pet-nat, private tours start from a conversation. The South Moravia wine guide has the vocabulary, label rules and villages in more detail.
