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Moravia is a region in the south of Czech Republic that is famous for many things, one of them being the amazing wine that comes out of there. This is how I experienced it for the first time.
There are plenty of wine festivals hosted all around Moravia, just find your favorite place and find out when they have it. The bigger the town you chose, the more chance you have to find some English speaking people in there.
Our plan
When I just arrived to Czech Republic, Lucy made an extreme effort to introduce me to as many things the country has to offer, especially the local places that tourists do not visit. And I, a foreigner that spoke zero Czech at that time, was just enjoying my VIP ticket into the Czech culture with my private guide.
For those of you that read the Canoeing in Czech Republic, where to start? post, we ended one of water routes in Hrádek, a Moravian village. Our plan was to spend the night there in a tent after rowing the whole day, and in the morning take a bus to Mikulov, for the recurring wine festival that is hosted there. I am a beer person, I didn't even like wine at that time. Lucy did, and she wanted to show me the culture of that part of the country. I was new to Czech Republic, so I wanted to give it a try.
The evening before
We arrived to Hrádek in the afternoon, we decided to into the village to try to find a place to eat after our hard day, and then find a place to build our tent and sleep it off to have energy for the wine festival awaiting us. We found out the schedule of the bus and found the center of the village, which had a restaurant, a pizzeria and ,of course, a pub. We decided to go to the pub first. It was full of people, they did not have food and kindly allowed us to bring a pizza from the neighboring pizzeria so we can eat and drink in the same place. As we were eating our dinner, Lucy ordered a glass of wine. I was thinking about a beer, they only had one of the commercial Czech beers, which means that I wasn't so impressed, and I kind of felt the need to already try the wine, since I'm already in the region (when in Rome, do as the Romans do, right?). I ordered a glass for myself as well.
Now, before I continue the story I must explain what were my problems with wine at that time (and at least one of them is stupid):
It always feels to me like a ripoff when you order a glass of wine and they bring you a glass that is 80% empty.
I don't like the taste. I have a problem with acidic wines, even today after some time since I opened myself to wine (I am aware that there are a lot of different wines, I just chose to generalize my opinion based on the few I tried beforehand).
The reason that I'm mentioning these things, is just to demonstrate how easily they were solved with the first sip of Moravian wine I ever had. Shortly after we ordered our wine, two FULL glasses of wine arrived. Already half of my problems are solved. I tasted the wine, and it was a complete surprise to me, it was sweet-ish and very refreshing, unlike any of the wines I have tried before. I liked the wine so much that we ended up drinking about 10 FULL glasses each during that evening, until the point that I have told Lucy that if we need to go because if I drink another drop I wouldn't be able to build a tent. As we were going out, a local couple sitting in the bar started speaking with Lucy, very quickly we found ourselves sitting down with them and, of course, having more wine. At some point of the evening Lucy fell asleep on the table, and I continued to drink with the couple. Imagine me, a person that doesn't speak a word in Czech, speaking to a local couple that does not speak a word in English for three to four hours... The crazy power of language under influence of alcohol. It turned out that the couple live just across the street from the pub, and when I told them (again, I don't know how) that I need to go because I need to build a tent, they very kindly offered us to sleep at their place, I happily accepted for both of us, and we went to sleep around 4am. So much for having energy for tomorrow
The day of the festival
We woke up around 1pm, when a child is looking at us through a glass door. It took me a minute to get my head in order about what happened last night, just in time for Lucy to wake up and ask me 'Where are we?' (not our proudest moment). After waking up and meeting our kind hosts, sober this time, we decided to go out and eat something before we take the late bus to Mikulov for our reduced time of a wine festival. The pizza place was closed, and as we were walking around we discovered that the village had an open wine cellar day, to correspond with the big festival in the bigger town. There was even a route to take so one can visit all the cellars in the village. We decided to try our luck there.
At the first cellar they had a live music show and some food. We spoke to the locals, who explained the concept to us. You buy tickets, each ticket is buying you a taste of wine, and you can use the tickets in any of the open cellars in the village. I still had an enormous hangover from our evening adventure, but Lucy was ready to taste some wines (I was both impressed and terrified). They gave each of us a wine glass necklace (yes, it is a thing) and we went down the first cellar. While Lucy and the other people enjoyed their wines, I mainly enjoyed the cold cellars to cool off and try to get over my massive hangover. In each cellar, then owner was explaining anything you'd like to hear about their wine. From how they made it to how they got into it and what are their other hobbies, most of them did not speak English, but I had my local translator with me. I managed not to drink until our fifth cellar, there I decided that I'm ready for a sample. from there on we visited a few more cellars, and ended up in our favorite one. This cellar turned out to be of the mayor of the village.
The wines were the best ones, as well of his stories (in our opinion), and the best of it was, that his son was presenting in the neighboring cellar, wines that he made by himself with different methods, a competition between the old-school and new-school in the household if you will. We hung out around there until darkness, at which point we followed the rest of the village for a huge dinner. We ate and kept went to the cellars that were still open.
Does anyone remember that we wanted to take a bus to the town with the wine festival? We didn't either.
As we continued our wine-cellar hike it started raining. Hard. We did not have a place to stay and our plan was to build the tent and sleep somewhere around the village, but with the rain it became impossible to find a suiting place that we can actually put the tent in. That is until we found a pergola near one of the cellars. The time was around 10pm and most of the cellars were closed already, this cellar was still open and was serving wine to the people that were having a party under the pergola. We decided to wait it out at the party, and put up our tent under the pergola after the party ends. Little as we knew, these people came there to have a proper party, we found ourselves in the middle of a techno party at 1am with a lot of drunk people. Believe it or not, Lucy fell asleep on a bench in the middle of the party with the music booming around us. I was sitting beside her waiting out the party. At 3am (5 hours after we arrived there) the party was over at last, I quickly built our tent and we went to sleep. We woke up a few hours after that to discover that a lot of people had the same idea like us and slept under the pergola in their sleeping bags. We packed our things and took a bus to go back to Prague.
Final thoughts
As you have seen, there is plenty of wine to go around the region. Whether you are attracting adventures like us, or planning properly and following your plans, you should visit Moravia, go to an open wine cellar and try their wines. The important part is to go there and try it there, the mentality is different and so is the experience. I hope you liked our adventure, and that unlike us, you will be able to follow your plans!
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