Moravian cellars in a day: private tour from Brno

This is the day I offer when someone has two nights in Brno and asks what the wine here is actually like. The honest answer takes four cellars. South Moravia starts 40 minutes from my door: first the Velké Pavlovice sub-region, the red-wine and natural-wine heart of Czechia, then the limestone country of Mikulov and Pálava. We visit Milan Nestarec in Velké Bílovice, Ota Ševčík on the Kraví hora at Bořetice, Sonberk above the Nové Mlýny reservoirs and Vinařství Volařík in Mikulov: two natural, two classic, poured in the order that makes the difference easiest to taste. It is a private tour only, two to eight guests, with no fixed departures. You name the date, I check that the four cellars can take us, and the day is yours.

08:30, Brno#

I collect you from your hotel or the main station. The minibus has a driver because Czechia allows exactly zero alcohol at the wheel. We take the D2 south towards Břeclav, 50 kilometres, about 45 minutes, and on the way I give you the country in numbers: roughly 17,000 hectares of vines, 96 percent of them in Moravia, about 13,000 registered growers in Moravia alone, most of them tiny. Brno itself has 14 vineyard tracts, one on the Špilberk castle hill. The grape names you will hear all day are in my guide to South Moravia.

09:15, Velké Bílovice: Milan Nestarec#

Velké Bílovice is the largest wine municipality in the country, 748 hectares and about a thousand growers. Milan Nestarec took over the vines his father planted in 2001 at Moravský Žižkov and farms some 24 hectares of loess and clay, organic in practice since 2008 and certified in 2022. Spontaneous fermentation, old 3,000-litre barrels, acacia and steel, no fining, no filtration, little or no sulfur. About 95 percent of the bottles leave the country, so tasting them here matters. We open with Danger 380 Volts, a pet-nat of Müller-Thurgau, Neuburské and Muškát moravský, then Forks & Knives White, a litre bottle of Veltlínské zelené, Ryzlink vlašský and Neuburské: dry, textured, salty. The winery keeps no public tasting hours; this hour is arranged well ahead.

11:00, Bořetice: Ota Ševčík on Kraví hora#

Fifteen minutes north-west, Kraví hora is a hill of cellars above Bořetice that declared itself the Free Federal Republic of Kraví hora on 12 November 2000, with its own president and passports. Ota Ševčík’s cellar is here. He made his first wine in 1992, farms 2.5 hectares and 12,500 certified-organic vines, and was a founding member of the Autentisté, the Moravian growers whose 2011 charter caps yields, requires spontaneous fermentation and allows nothing in the cellar beyond sulfur, bentonite and egg white. His whites spend at least ten months in oak and acacia barrels of 228 to 600 litres, then rest in glass demijohns; they come out deep and slightly oxidative, the old Moravian way. He pours from the barrel with a koštýř, the glass pipette, beside a plate of bread, škvarky, lard with onion and smoked meat. A Ryzlink rýnský, a firm earthy Frankovka, and my explanation of why this cellar and the last are both called natural though they taste nothing alike; more in what I pour.

13:15, Pavlov: lunch under Pálava#

Half an hour south, the Pálava hills rise out of the plain: Jurassic limestone, Děvín at 549 metres, a protected landscape since 1976. Pavlov sits at their foot beside the Nové Mlýny reservoirs, a village of baroque press houses whose cellar lane is a heritage zone. Lunch is at a family-run restaurant in the village: roast duck with red cabbage and bread dumplings, a Frankovka from the morning, and a dry Ryzlink vlašský to reset the palate for the afternoon. Two kilometres along the shore lies Dolní Věstonice, where a ceramic Venus from roughly 29,000 to 25,000 BC was dug up.

14:45, Popice: Sonberk#

A quarter of an hour on, Sonberk is often called the first modern winery building in the country: Josef Pleskot’s long roof, finished in 2008, over 40 hectares of south-facing loess where the estate says vines have stood since the 13th century. Founded in 2003, with Oldřich Drápal Jr. in the cellar, it is classic in the best sense: hand harvest in several passes, steel with some oak, clean and precise. We taste on the terrace with the reservoirs and Pálava in front of us. Ryzlink rýnský first, lime and wet stone, bone dry. Then Pálava, the grape Josef Veverka bred in 1953 from Tramín and Müller-Thurgau and registered in 1977: rose petal, lychee, honey, a little residual sugar held up by firm acidity. To finish, the straw wine, Pálava dried for about five months on racks, in 250-millilitre bottles. Anyone who thinks Czech wine is only light and dry leaves this terrace corrected.

16:15, Mikulov: Vinařství Volařík#

Twenty minutes to Mikulov, the baroque town under the Dietrichstein chateau. Vinařství Volařík was founded in 2007 by Miroslav Volařík on land his family farmed after the war and regained in 1989: 80 hectares today at Perná and Březí under Pálava, on sites named Kotelná, Železná and Ořechová hora, and the national Vinař roku title won more than once. The house grape is Ryzlink vlašský, Welschriesling, a workhorse elsewhere and something else on Mikulov limestone. The cellar makes more than ten separate lots of it a year, reductively in steel, and we taste three from different sites side by side: the clearest argument for terroir I know in Moravia, made in a resolutely classic cellar. A Tramín closes the tasting, and if there is light left we walk the square.

17:45, back to Brno#

Fifty-five kilometres, about 50 minutes, arriving around 18:45. On the drive I write you a list of the wines we tasted and where in Brno to buy the ones you liked; for dinner, I know where to send you. If the day has done what it usually does, the Moravian weekend is the same idea over three days, with Znojmo and the Šobes vineyard added.

Dates on request#

There are no scheduled departures for this tour. It runs privately, for two to eight people, on the day you choose, all year. Write to me with a date and the number of guests; I confirm with the four cellars and come back to you within two or three days. Two weeks’ notice is comfortable, more in September and around 11 November. If one of the four cannot host us, I swap in a neighbour of the same kind, Petr Koráb in Boleradice or Richard Stávek in Němčičky on the natural side, another Mikulov estate on the classic, and I tell you before you decide.

Who this tour is for#

Anyone with one day in Brno and a real interest in what is in the glass: couples, a table of friends, colleagues after a conference. You need not know Frankovka from Blaufränkisch on the way out (they are the same grape); you will on the way back. It suits people who want to taste the natural-versus-classic argument rather than read about it, and who like a long lunch. It does not suit anyone who wants eight cellars; four is the honest number, and the driver has a boot for bottles. For a larger group, or a day built around different estates, ask me about a private tour.

Practical notes#

Pick-up is anywhere in central Brno at 08:30; from Vienna, take the train the evening before, about 1 h 30. The walking is short: cellar steps, a few hundred metres in Pavlov, the square in Mikulov. Cellars hold 10 to 12 °C all year, so bring a layer even in July, when outside it can reach 32 °C. Autumn is the season I would pick: harvest in September, burčák, the half-fermented must sold only for a few weeks, and cellars that smell of it. The second weekend of September is the Pálavské vinobraní in Mikulov and the town is full; I route around it or into it, as you prefer.

Cards work at the larger estates; carry some koruna for the small cellars and tips. Closed shoes, a bag for bottles, and an appetite: we taste around 15 wines over the day, with water and bread between them, and I keep the pours honest. Dietary needs, children, deposits and cancellations are in the FAQ.