The D2 out of Brno is dull for half an hour, then the Pálava hills stand up out of the plain on the right and the road remembers where it is. At Popice I turn off, climb through the village and come out on a slope that faces the hills across a sheet of water. This is Sonberk, in the Mikulov sub-region of South Moravia, Czechia: 40 hectares of loess, one long roof, and the view the whole region is photographed for.
I was there on Thursday 30 October 2025, at 10:30, the terrace thermometer at 13 °C and the Nové Mlýny reservoirs below the colour of pewter. The vines were half yellow. Under a roof at the edge of the yard, the last Pálava grapes of the year already lay on racks, drying for a wine that would not be pressed until spring.
The sunny hill above the water#
The hill was Sonnenberg before it was Sonberk, the sunny hill, and the estate says vines have stood on it since the 13th century. The modern estate dates from 2003, when a small group, two investors, a wine trader and an oenologist named Oldřich Drápal, took on the slope and started again. Today the cellar is run by his son, Oldřich Drápal Jr., whom the Czech wine press credits with the estate’s straw wines.
I met the wines before I met the man. Years ago, in a Brno restaurant, Sonberk Pálava was the bottle I poured for guests who said they did not like aromatic wines; most changed their minds by the second glass. I bring groups here because it is the clearest statement of the classic Moravian case I know.
A roof by Josef Pleskot#
The building was designed between 2005 and 2007 by Josef Pleskot, finished in 2008, and is usually called the first modern winery building in Czechia. It is long and low and set into the slope, one broad roof over everything from the press to the bottle and over the terrace where guests sit. Moravian wine had always lived in cellars under village lanes; Sonberk put it in the light.
The terrace is the point. You sit facing south with the whole of Pálava in front of you, Děvín at 549 metres, the Děvičky ruin on its shoulder, Pavlov at its foot and the reservoirs between. Oldřich came out with a Ryzlink rýnský and two glasses, and for a few minutes we did what everyone does here, which is look.
Loess, Riesling, Pálava and a cellar that explains itself#
The soil came first. The Popice slope is deep loess, the wind-blown silt that covers much of South Moravia: it warms quickly, drains well and holds enough water to see the vines through a dry August. The rows face south at roughly 200 to 260 metres, and the water below softens the April frosts that catch vineyards further from the lakes.
Three grapes carry the estate: Ryzlink rýnský, true Riesling; Pálava; and Merlot for the reds. Around them stand Tramín, Muškát moravský, Sauvignon, Rulandské šedé and Chardonnay. Picking is by hand, in several passes. “We go back through the same rows more than once,” Oldřich said. “The grape tells you when, if you are there to listen.”
The cellar is a classic one and does not pretend otherwise: steel for most of the whites, some oak for the wines that can carry it, sulfur measured and added on time. Pálava, the grape, is a local, crossed from Tramín and Müller-Thurgau by Josef Veverka in 1953, finished at the Perná breeding station across the water and registered in 1977. Sonberk’s version is off-dry, the sugar held straight by acidity, and it is the wine most guests remember.
Straw wine on racks, not straw#
The straw wine is where the estate becomes unusual. Slámové víno is made from grapes dried after the harvest, traditionally on straw or reeds, for at least three months. Sonberk uses neither: the Pálava lies on individual racks under a corrugated roof, in moving air, for about five months. Straw can carry moulds and stray flavours into the fruit; racks carry nothing but time.
By then the berries have lost most of their water, and what is left is pressed slowly for a wine of around 197 grams per litre of residual sugar, sold in 250-millilitre bottles. The estate calls it a liquid dessert and I do not argue: rose, dried apricot and honey, the acidity of the variety still audible underneath.
“Straw wine is mostly waiting,” Oldřich said, walking me along the racks. “The grapes do the work. My job is to check them every day and not to be in a hurry.”
One glass on the terrace#
We tasted in the order I always ask for: Ryzlink rýnský first, lime and wet stone, bone dry; then Tramín; then Pálava dry and off-dry; the straw wine last, by which time the light had moved across the water. This is the glass I wrote down.
Apricots, honey and a cold plate#
The estate keeps apricot orchards and beehives, and the table shows it. Lunch on the terrace was a Moravian cold plate: dark bread, smoked pork, a pot of škvarky, fresh cheese and a wedge of Olomoucké tvarůžky, the pungent ripened curd cheese that only Tramín really stands up to; then honey from the estate’s hives and koláče filled with its own apricots.
The Riesling went with the pork, the Tramín with the tvarůžky, a pairing I would not have believed until a Moravian made me try it, and the off-dry Pálava with the koláče and a piece of blue cheese Oldřich brought out for the purpose. The estate has also run Indian dinners around that wine in London; rose petal and lychee against cumin and chilli makes more sense than it sounds.
Sonberk on tour, and how to visit#
On my Moravian day tour from Brno Sonberk is the afternoon stop, around 14:45, after a morning with Milan Nestarec in Velké Bílovice and before Vinařství Volařík in Mikulov. On the South Moravia weekend it is the second afternoon, after the Blue Hills and before dusk in the Pavlov cellar lane across the water. I place it after the natural cellars on purpose: guests arrive having tasted wines made with almost nothing added and meet a cellar that adds exactly what is needed and can explain each addition. Most come away respecting both; the argument is in what I pour, natural and conventional.
Popice is about 40 minutes from Brno. The estate is open daily, 10:00 to 18:00 from March to October and 10:00 to 17:00 in winter. Czech law allows no alcohol at the wheel, so we come by minibus with a driver. For the limestone across the water, read my Mikulov guide; for the rest of the country, the Czechia guide.
I left at 15:00 with two of the small bottles in my bag and the racks of Pálava still drying behind me, five months from becoming wine. On the drive north the hills sank back into the plain, but the picture stayed: a long roof, a sheet of water, and a slope that has faced the sun long enough to be named for it.
