The place#
Bohemia is the other Czech wine region, and most people, Czechs included, forget it exists. Moravia holds about 96 percent of the country’s vines; Bohemia has the remaining 675 hectares, under four percent, scattered across 75 villages along the Labe (Elbe), the Vltava and the Ohře, with an outlier at Kutná Hora to the east. Officially the region is Čechy, split into Mělnická, 349 hectares around Mělník, and Litoměřická, 326 around Litoměřice and Velké Žernoseky.
I live in Brno, and Mělník is 2 h 45 from my door, so my scheduled Czech tours do not reach it. But it is 35 km and 40 minutes from Prague, where a good share of my guests land. For them Bohemia is the wine day that fits before or after Moravia: a chateau above a river confluence, two serious family cellars, and vineyards inside the capital itself.
Mělník is the centre. The town sits on a bluff where the Vltava, arriving from Prague, meets the Labe; the Vltava is the bigger river here, but the Labe keeps the name, and the chateau terrace looks straight down onto the meeting of the waters with vine terraces underneath. Litoměřice, an hour north-west of Prague, is a baroque town where the Labe cuts into the old volcanic hills of the České středohoří; the steep slopes at Velké Žernoseky just outside it are the region’s other historic vineyard.
Terroir: the northern limit#
Bohemian vines grow at roughly 150 to 300 metres, low by Moravian standards, but this is the northern edge of Czech viticulture and every worthwhile hectare faces the sun: steep, south-facing river banks above the Labe and Vltava that hold warmth and let cold air drain to the water. Away from the rivers grapes do not ripen reliably.
Soils around Mělník are marl and sandstone under loess; near Litoměřice the České středohoří adds volcanic rock. The climate is cool continental with real winters, ripening comes later and acidity stays higher than in Mikulov or Velké Pavlovice, and Bohemian whites are usually compared to the Rhine rather than to anything Austrian. I find that fair: leaner, more nervous, a degree lower in alcohol.
Grapes and styles: Pinot Noir, Riesling and the resistant crosses#
The grape that defines Bohemia is Pinot Noir, Rulandské modré in Czech. On 16 February 1358 the emperor Charles IV issued a decree on planting vineyards around Prague, extended it to every royal town in Bohemia, and had Burgundian vines brought to Mělník. The Lobkowicz family kept to the idea, bringing 6,000 Burgundian vines from France in 1798. Six centuries on, Mělník Pinot Noir is still pale, red-fruited, delicate and higher in acid than most Moravian versions, and it is the wine I pour to make the region’s point. Taste one beside a Pinot from Petr Koráb’s cellar in Boleradice and the latitude lesson takes about a minute.
Whites are the majority. Riesling, Ryzlink rýnský, does well on the steepest Mělník slopes and gives lime, wet stone and a firm spine. Pinot Gris and Pinot Blanc fill the middle, Müller-Thurgau is the everyday glass, and Hibernal, a fungus-resistant German crossing, suits organic growers in these damp autumns. Other reds are Modrý Portugal, Svatovavřinecké and Dornfelder.
Producers to know#
Zámecké vinařství Mělník (Lobkowicz)#
The chateau winery. Archaeology puts vines at Mělník in the ninth century, and legend credits St Ludmila with planting them for altar wine. The Lobkowicz winemaking line begins in 1753 with a dowry of four vineyards, 19.5 hectares; the St Ludmila vineyard below the chateau, 1.8 hectares and 15,537 vines, was laid out under Jiří Kristián Lobkowicz. The estate was taken from the family in the twentieth century and returned in 1992. Today it farms 23 hectares and makes 30,000 to 40,000 bottles a year, and the cellars are open to visitors.
Vinařství Kraus#
The other Mělník name, and the one I trust most on the technical side. Founded by Professor Vilém Kraus, a grape breeder, the winery is now in its third generation. It farms 24 hectares, 21.5 of them on the south-west-facing Klamovka slope, and bottles about 120,000 a year, 80 percent white and all under screw cap. Riesling, Hibernal and Pinot Noir are the wines to ask for. Clean, classic cellar work without fuss.
Vinné sklepy Kutná Hora#
Eighty kilometres east of Prague, in the UNESCO-listed silver town of Kutná Hora, this is the estate that gives Bohemia its natural-wine card. Ecological farming from 2009, full biodynamic certification in 2014, described as the first fully certified biodynamic winery in Czechia: sheep between the rows, biochar and compost. It was built by Stanislav and Lukáš Rudolfský with Karel Schwarzenberg as a partner; its three lines are Schwarzenbergská, Classic and Wine PUNK. Its Moravian counterpart is Dobrá Vinice at Znojmo. For what biodynamics means in practice, read my plain-language note, then look at the sheep.
The Prague vineyards#
Prague has half a dozen working vineyards totalling under 12 hectares, around 45,000 litres a year. The oldest record dates from about 1228, a vineyard in Troja belonging to St George’s convent at Prague Castle, and two of them are on that slope today. Vinice sv. Kláry, St Clare’s vineyard, is 3.5 hectares of terraces above the baroque Troja chateau, part of the Prague Botanical Garden since 1995. Salabka, 4.5 hectares next door, is the city’s largest and has a restaurant. The Troja Wine Festival is held each September; the 28th edition falls on 12 September 2026.
What a day here looks like on tour#
I run Bohemia as a Prague day, usually the day after guests land. We leave the city at 09:00 and are in Mělník by 09:45. First the chateau: the terrace over the confluence while the light is still low on the water, then the cellars and a tasting that opens with Riesling and closes on Pinot Noir. Then across town to Kraus and out onto the Klamovka slope, to stand in the rows and taste a second Pinot Noir against the first.
Lunch is in Mělník: pike-perch or carp with Pinot Gris, then svíčková, beef in cream sauce with dumplings and cranberries, with the Pinot Noir.
The afternoon has two versions. The quiet one follows the Labe north to Litoměřice and the slopes at Velké Žernoseky. The longer one goes east to Kutná Hora: St Barbara’s cathedral, the old town, and a biodynamic tasting with the sheep in view. Either way we are back in Prague for dinner, and the next morning the minibus turns south to Moravia. For a group arriving in the evening there is a city version: a walk from the Troja chateau up through St Clare’s terraces and a glass at Salabka.
Practical: 40 minutes from Prague, 2 h 45 from Brno#
Mělník is 35 km north of Prague, 40 minutes by road, and about the same from Prague Václav Havel airport, so it works as an arrival-day visit. Litoměřice is 65 km and an hour from Prague; Kutná Hora 80 km and 1 h 10. From Brno, Mělník is about 240 km and 2 h 45.
May to June and September to October are the months. September brings the harvest festivals, Mělník’s own vinobraní and Troja’s, and burčák, the half-fermented young must. October is quiet and golden; winter tastings are by appointment, with cellars at 10 to 12 °C.
My two scheduled Czech programmes, the South Moravia weekend and the Moravia day tour from Brno, stay in the south, in Mikulov, Znojmo and Velké Pavlovice. Bohemia belongs to private itineraries: a Prague day before Moravia, or a slower week that does both. If that is what you have in mind, tell me. For the whole country, start with my Czechia guide; for the south, the South Moravia wine guide.
