Wine history
The oldest witnesses of history of viticulture in Moravia are the archaeological findings of wine-growers’ tools, which once served to the Roman legionaries for cultivation of vineyards below Pálava already two thousand years ago. The first written documents are the monastery chronicles and parchments of Bohemian monarchs.
Wine was the inseparable part of medieval culture and represented a significant benefit for the economy in those days. The Benedictines from Třebíč, the Premonstratensians from Louka near Znojmo and the Cistercians from Velehrad near Uherské Hradiště once were real wine-making masters. They grew quality varieties, improved their art using brave experiments and developed good wine-growing and cellar methods, which are still respected by supporters of old wine-making traditions. Moravian wines, which were carefully cared of, soon found their way to the world, and especially to Bohemia and northern European countries.
The golden age of Moravian viticulture is the period from the 14th up to 16th century, when vineyards surrounded numerous towns and monasteries.
Although, the care of vineyards and collection of wine tithe used to be a domain of monasteries, rich habitants of towns often invested their money into the vineyards because good vineyard in attractive locality sometimes had bigger value than a beautiful house. The biggest wine centres were established in Znojmo, Dolní Kounice, Mikulov, Hustopeče, Strážnice and Blatnice pod svatým Antonínkem. Disaster for so promising Moravian viticulture came with the Thirty Years' War, during which half of the vineyards perished. In the second half of the 17th century small country wine-growers started to re-establish desolated and neglected vineyards, however, the total area of vineyards hasn’t reached the original size. At the end of the 19th century a part of vineyards was destroyed due to frost and mildew diseases, and the deathblow to the Moravian vineyards was the phylloxera. In 1890 this roots attacking pest of vine spread from Western Europe to the Czech lands, affected vineyards in entire Moravia and destroyed the majority of them within ten years. In the 20th century new immune vineyards were established with new varieties and today our Moravian wines charm the world with their quality.
As the only safe protection against phylloxera was grafting on a resistant rootstock, the land and state vine nurseries were established. Renewed Moravian vineyards gradually reached the original area. The present viticulture uses the latest technology procedures and aims at production of quality wines, especially predicate wines. They are made in small batches, but with a diverse variety choice and excellent quality, which grade our white wines especially to the world top. Our predecessors drunk especially label wines – mixtures of several varieties, prepared on the basis of local traditions. Therefore every year wine had different taste, according to which variety had better yield and which taste and aroma prevailed. The presently grown varieties and production of varietal wines appeared only in the 19th and 20th century.
The Moravia wine-growing region offers wine of endless diversity, which outstand with their fruity taste and spiciness, wide spectrum of aroma and harmonious full taste.
There are many reasons why you can discover in Moravia so many original wines with a big diversity of types. Above all it is various geological origin and soil conditions. Vine is grown on volcanic rocks, limestones, sands or deep loess. The climate, which differs from other European wine-growing localities, very ragged countryside relief and determining microclimate conditions of individual vineyards. In the Czech Republic vine is grown on the northern edge of its occurrence. The vegetation period is rather shorter than in south-western Europe, but maturation of grapes is significantly speeded up by hot summer months. Grapes are usually harvested later in the autumn and therefore they have specific conditions for their maturation, hot days and cooler nights, which maintain bigger amount of various aromatic agents in grapes.
According to the records, kept by the Cultivation wine-growing station in Velké Pavlovice, Moravia has an average yearly temperature 9.42 °C, yearly rainfall around 510 mm and the sun shines here for 2,244 hours per year. When the Czech Republic entered the European Union, the wine-growing area was divided on the Bohemia wine-growing region with the Mělník and Litoměřice sub-regions and the Moravia wine-growing region, which is composed of four sub-regions: Znojmo, Mikulov, Velké Pavlovice and Moravian Slovakia. Spoken in numbers the Moravia wine-growing region involves circa 96 % area of registered vineyards in the Czech Republic with a total area of vineyards 18,500 hectares.
