It almost seems as if Jan Neruda in his poem, through the mouth of the king, predicted the relationship of the Czechs to their wine in the twenty-first century. Local wines remained in the shadow of famous wines from abroad for a long time - after all, a bottle of French or Italian wine still hasn't lost its splendour.
However, Moravian and Czech wines have patiently been making their way to the taste buds and hearts of the laic and professional public, and the best Czech wineries have begun to be widely recognized.
Local wines
The largest volume of wine is grown in Moravia, in Bohemia we can find two wine-growing sub-regions - Litoměřice and Mělník. However, domestic vineyards are far from being able to cover the country's wine consumption - they hardly satisfy about a quarter of the demand. Perhaps that is why local wines are gaining ground more slowly. In addition, the popularity of wine in our country is still growing - since the 1990s, annual consumption per capita has increased by about 40%.
Among domestic wines, we can most often find the varieties Veltlínské zelené and Müller Thurgau, among the blue grapes, whose production lags behind the white ones, we can usually come across Svatovavřinecké or Frankovka.
Our wines abroad
That Czech and Moravian wines do not lag behind foreign countries is proved every year by the prizes winemakers bring from world competitions. The local wines regularly score points at the important AWC Vienna competition, however, in 2019 they also attracted attention in the United States, Spain or Hong Kong.
The quality of wines from Bohemia and Moravia has also been noticed by the chefs of the world's best restaurants and they do not hesitate to choose the most suitable drink from them for their precisely compiled menus. Moravian and Czech wines thus appear on the wine lists of top restaurants, for example in New York, Tokyo, London, Paris or the Nordic countries.
Czech Wine Salon
The best domestic wines have been awarded and announced at the Wine Salon in the Czech Republic for twenty years. The largest domestic competition, sponsored by the Association of Winemakers of the Czech Republic, takes place in three rounds and at the end of it a list of the 100 best wines for the given year is created. For laic wine lovers, perhaps the most important part of the competition is the almost year-round tasting exhibition in the cellars of the Valtice chateau, where visitors can get acquainted with the winning products.
If we can't go out to drink wine, wine can come to us
Another option is a guided online tasting, which can be an interesting and pleasant experience during long pandemic evenings.
