The place#
Znojmo is the westernmost of South Moravia’s four wine sub-regions in Czechia and the one that looks most toward Austria. The town stands on a cliff above the Dyje river, 70 kilometres south-west of my door in Brno; the Znojemská podoblast around it holds 3,069 hectares of vines in 90 wine villages and about 810 registered growers. Across the Pulkau valley the slopes continue as Austria’s Weinviertel. Of the sub-regions in my Czechia guide, this is the cool corner: sharper whites, fewer reds.
Two places define it for me. West of the town the Dyje cuts a forested canyon, Podyjí National Park since 1991, twinned with Austria’s Nationalpark Thayatal on the far bank. Inside the park, on a rocky promontory in a meander of the river, lies Šobes: about 12 hectares of vines on ground farmed for some 7,000 years and under vines since the Middle Ages. It is often listed among Europe’s best-sited vineyards, and having stood on it in a September wind I do not argue.
South of the town, at Nový Šaldorf, an 800-metre lane holds more than 180 cellar structures cut into sandstone streaked with blue-grey clay. Locals call them the Modré sklepy, the blue cellars; the lane is heritage-protected. The other wine centres are Šatov, Hnanice, Chvalovice and Dobšice near the border, and Dolní Kounice, Ivančice and Miroslav toward Brno.
Terroir: the massif, the river and the wind#
Vines sit at roughly 200 to 350 metres, and the geology changes from west to east. In Podyjí and the western villages they stand on the crystalline rock of the Bohemian Massif, granite, gneiss and old schist, the stone Dobrá Vinice put into the name of its Kambrium cuvée. Toward Znojmo the bedrock disappears under loess and sandstone, which is what the blue cellars are dug into; along the Dyje itself there is sand and gravel.
The climate is the point of difference from Mikulov, 55 kilometres east. Znojmo is cooler and windier; the massif and the river valley slow ripening and hold acidity, giving whites with firm acid and herbal aromatics rather than the riper, saltier limestone style under Pálava. It is also why the town’s other famous product is the gherkin: znojemské okurky grow on the same fields, and they go with Veltlínské zelené better than you would expect.
Grüner Veltliner, Sauvignon and Riesling#
VOC Znojmo, created in 2009, was the first Czech appellation of its kind: a producers’ association with a tasting panel and a short list of permitted grapes. The list is the sub-region in three words, Veltlínské zelené, Sauvignon and Ryzlink rýnský, plus their blends. I explain the VOC system and the přívlastek ladder in my South Moravia guide.
Veltlínské zelené is Grüner Veltliner, and Znojmo is its Czech home as the Weinviertel is its Austrian one: white pepper, green apple, a faint bitter-almond finish, usually dry and lean. Sauvignon is the variety that surprises visitors most: nettle, gooseberry and cut grass over a stony middle, closer to the Loire than to New Zealand. In spring I order it with asparagus from Ivančice, the sub-region’s asparagus town. Ryzlink rýnský, Riesling, gives lime and wet stone and ages well from the better sites, Šobes above all.
Müller-Thurgau is the everyday white, Pálava plays its usual semi-dry aromatic role, and the reds, mainly Frankovka, Svatovavřinecké and Modrý Portugal, cluster around Dolní Kounice. The outlier is Dobrá Vinice’s amber wine from buried qvevri; I write about the vessel in qvevri, karas and amphora.
Producers to know#
Dobrá Vinice is the estate that first brought me to Znojmo. Petr Nejedlík and Andrea Nejedlíková farm 16 hectares at Popice and Konice inside the national park (this Popice, not the one under Pálava), on gneiss, granite and flint. The cellar runs from stainless steel through oak and acacia to Georgian qvevri buried in the ground; they are credited with bringing the first qvevri to Czechia. Kambrium Cuvée, about 60 percent Veltlínské zelené with Ryzlink rýnský and Sauvignon, is the introduction: dry, stony, herbal. The Qvevri whites are amber and tannic, dried apricot and tea. Their tasting cellar is one of the blue cellars at Nový Šaldorf.
Znovín Znojmo is the sub-region’s large historic house, seated at Šatov. It has owned Šobes since 1995, when it bought the vineyard from the village, and farms other named sites such as U tří dubů and Kamenný vrch. In summer it runs a tasting stand at the vineyard, so you drink the Šobes wines on the Šobes rock. The style is classic and clean: přívlastek and VOC Znojmo labels.
Lahofer at Dobšice farms about 430 hectares in the sub-region, one of the largest producers in the country. Its concrete winery by the architects Chybik + Kristof opened on 1 June 2020; the roof is a walkable amphitheatre over the vines, where I take groups for a last glass before the drive home.
Vinařství Špalek, a family estate at Nový Šaldorf with 12 hectares on Kraví hora, has farmed organically and partly biodynamically since 2012 and built the district’s first gravity-flow cellar. Vinice-Hnanice, founded in 2001 with 103 hectares planted in 2003, works Sauvignon, Pálava, Riesling and Veltliner in a modern classic style and runs a hotel. Both are VOC Znojmo members, and between Špalek’s gravity cellar and Znovín’s tanks the sub-region gives me the natural-and-classic contrast I build every tour around.
What a day here looks like on tour#
We leave Brno after breakfast and are in Znojmo old town within the hour. First the rotunda of St Catherine, an 11th-century Romanesque chapel with medieval frescoes of the Přemyslid princes, and the view from the castle terrace into the Dyje valley. Then we drive to Havraníky or Podmolí, leave the minibus and walk 3 to 4 kilometres through the Podyjí forest down to Šobes; cars are not allowed in. In May the slopes are in flower, in September the vines are heavy and the Znovín stand is open.
Lunch is in a Šaldorf blue cellar: bread, škvarky, smoked meat, cheese, gherkins, and Veltlínské zelené drawn from the barrel with a koštýř, the glass pipette every Moravian cellar keeps by the door. In the afternoon we taste with Dobrá Vinice, and I pour a steel-fermented Veltlínské zelené beside a qvevri one so the vessel’s effect is on the table, not in my description. We finish on Lahofer’s roof, then back to Brno for a late dinner, or 50 minutes east to sleep under Pálava.
Practical#
Znojmo is 70 kilometres from Brno, about an hour by road via Pohořelice. From Vienna airport it is 90 kilometres and roughly 1 h 20 through the Hatě crossing, the easiest Moravian sub-region to reach from Austria. Mikulov is 55 kilometres away. The Šobes walk is on forest paths, one steady descent and the same climb back; wear proper shoes and allow two hours with the tasting. Czechia has a zero-tolerance drink-driving limit, so we always have a driver.
The best months are May and June, when Podyjí is at its greenest, and September and October. The Znojemské historické vinobraní, the town’s harvest festival with a costumed procession of King John of Luxembourg, fills the old town on the second weekend of September (11 to 13 September 2026). Book beds months ahead, or come the week after, when the burčák still flows and the lanes are quiet.
Znojmo is one of the three legs of my South Moravia weekend, with Pálava and the Velké Pavlovice cellar villages. From Vienna, a private day that crosses at Hatě, walks down to Šobes and ends in a blue cellar is one of the simplest routes I run.
