South Moravia: a wine weekend from Brno

This is the weekend I run from my own front door. Two nights, three days, six to ten guests, and a minibus that leaves Brno at 09:00 on Friday and has you back by Sunday evening. South Moravia holds about 96 percent of the vines in Czechia, most of them within an hour of my flat, and the cellars, not the wineries, are the point: in Velké Bílovice, the largest wine village in the country, nearly every house has a press house above a cellar.

We take three sub-regions in turn: Velké Pavlovice, the red-wine heart and the densest natural-wine scene in the country; Mikulov and Pálava, limestone hills above the water; and Znojmo, granite and gneiss on the Austrian border. Seven cellars: four natural, two classic and one that sits between, and I pour all of them without taking sides.

Day 1: Brno to Rakvice and Velké Bílovice#

We leave Brno at 09:00 on the D2 south and reach Rakvice in about 45 minutes. Vinselekt Michlovský is where I set the baseline. Miloš Michlovský is a viticulture professor and vine breeder who privatised the Perná breeding station in 1994, farms about 125 hectares and has written eight books on wine, one of them on sulfur dioxide. His Ryzlink vlašský and Pálava are made with cultured yeasts, steel and oak, sulfur within the norms, every step a decision he can explain.

Fifteen minutes east is Velké Bílovice; lunch is in a cellar there, bread, škvarky and smoked meat with Veltlínské zelené drawn from the barrel by koštýř. At 14:00 we are with Milan Nestarec: some 24 hectares of loess and clay farmed organically since 2008, spontaneous fermentation, old 3,000-litre barrels and acacia, nothing fined or filtered, little or no sulfur. Forks & Knives White beside the morning’s Ryzlink vlašský is the weekend in two glasses. It is not a walk-in cellar; I arrange it months ahead.

Twenty minutes on, Vinařství Krásná hora at Starý Poddvorov, just over the line into Slovácko, closes the day in the middle ground: the Vybíral family’s 5 hectares, organic since 2009, biodynamic preparations since 2014, Pinots and Chardonnay on fine lees in oak. Dinner in Velké Bílovice is roast duck, red cabbage and Frankovka; the night, a family guesthouse with its own cellar.

Day 2: Modré Hory, Sonberk and Pálava#

Boleradice is 25 minutes north-west, on the edge of Modré Hory, the Blue Hills, five villages named because more than half the vines are dark varieties. Petr Koráb trained as a chef and qualified as a lawyer before he and his brother Marek started here in 2006. The cellar is a single arch bored about 100 metres into the hillside, gravity does the moving, and the label reads Živá Hora, living hill: three to four hectares, biodynamic, goats in the yard for milk and preparations. We taste Riesling Lemonade, a pet-nat, and Future Sekt, his traditional-method answer to Champagne.

Ten minutes over the hill, Richard Stávek farms 15 hectares at Němčičky, only 4.5 to 5 of them vines: old Central European varieties planted together in the Veselý plot, foot-trodden, ten months in barrel, no sulfur or nearly none; sheep, goats, honey. There is no tasting room; we are guests on a working farm, and I confirm each date with him. Lunch at a village inn is svíčková and a Frankovka.

Then 30 minutes south to Popice. Sonberk is the other pole: 40 hectares of loess, founded in 2003, Josef Pleskot’s long, low building of 2008, a terrace facing Pálava across the Nové Mlýny reservoirs. Oldřich Drápal Jr. runs the cellar; the Pálava is rose petal, honey and lychee held straight by acidity, and the straw wine, grapes dried five months on racks under a roof, comes in 250-millilitre bottles. Dusk in Pavlov’s lane of baroque press houses, then 15 minutes to a small hotel in Mikulov.

Day 3: Mikulov to Znojmo and home to Brno#

Sunday starts slowly: the square in Mikulov, the Dietrichstein chateau above it, and for those who want it a 30-minute climb up Svatý kopeček for the view over the red roofs. Then 50 minutes west into Znojmo, a cooler, windier sub-region where the grapes are Veltlínské zelené, Sauvignon and Ryzlink rýnský.

At Nový Šaldorf, more than 180 cellars cut into sandstone shot with blue-grey clay line an 800-metre lane, the Modré sklepy, and Dobrá Vinice tastes in one of them: Petr Nejedlík and Andrea Nejedlíková, 16 hectares at Popice u Znojma and Konice inside the Podyjí National Park, biodynamic work, and Georgian qvevri buried in the ground, credited as the first in Czechia. Kambrium, 60 percent Veltlínské zelené with Ryzlink rýnský and Sauvignon, is stony and herbal; the qvevri white is amber, dried apricot and black tea, and anyone who has been to Georgia with me will know it at once.

Lunch in Znojmo, the gherkin town, is řízek with a Sauvignon that smells of nettles; in May, asparagus from Ivančice. The afternoon is a choice: the 11th-century rotunda of St Catherine and the old town above the Dyje, or a 3-kilometre walk from Havraníky down into the river’s meander to Šobes, 12 hectares of Znovín’s vines on a rocky spur inside the park where no car goes. Brno is an hour away; you are home by about 18:00.

Who this tour is for#

People with an evening in Brno or Vienna to spare who want to know what Moravia actually drinks, not only what it exports; and Czech readers who have driven past these villages for years and never rung the bell. You will taste Ryzlink vlašský from a professor and from a man who prints Danger 380 Volts on a pet-nat, and by Sunday you will have an opinion; the argument itself is in what I pour, natural and conventional. Couples, friends and solo travellers who like a long table. The walking is short and mostly flat apart from cellar steps and the two optional climbs. It does not suit anyone who wants a timetable to the minute: cellar hosts talk, and I let them. If you have a single day, the day tour from Brno covers one sub-region; for your own group, your own dates or the St Martin’s weekend, the route runs as a private tour for two to twelve.

Practical notes#

Brno is the start and the end. From Vienna Schwechat airport it is 130 kilometres, about 1 h 45 by road, or a direct train from Vienna’s main station in about 1.5 hours. From Prague, about 2.5 hours by train or motorway. Brno-Tuřany airport has few scheduled routes, so check before you rely on it. I collect you from your Brno hotel at 08:45 on Friday and on Sunday we drop you at the main station or your hotel by about 18:00. Come the evening before; I will tell you where to drink.

Weather by departure. October is golden vineyards and cellars full of fermenting must, 10 to 18 °C by day and cool by dusk. May is green vines, open-cellar weekends in the villages and asparagus; a late frost is possible, so bring a jacket. The September departure runs the weekend after the Pálavské vinobraní in Mikulov, when the crowds have gone home and burčák, the half-fermented must, is still poured in the villages. For the St Martin’s goose on 11 November, when the year’s young wine is opened at 11:00, I run the route privately.

Pack closed shoes for cellar steps and gravel lanes, a layer for cellars at 10 to 12 °C in any month, and a hat in September. Czechia uses the koruna, not the euro; cards work in almost every cellar, but bring some cash for a jar of honey at Němčičky or a bottle from a village cellar. Driving here means zero alcohol, which is why we have a driver. Rooms are a family guesthouse and a small hotel, comfortable rather than grand. Deposits, single rooms and dietary needs are in the FAQ. If you want to read before you come, start with my guide to South Moravian wine.