It’s hard to imagine a more specialized niche for a wine importer: wines from the south east of Moravia in the Czech Republic. But it is what it brand new wine importer Morwine has as a specialty. (And to make it even more exotic, they import the wines to Sweden.)
This gave us the occasion to do an interview with the wine entrepreneur who started Morwine, but I will spare you that since they only sell in Sweden. (But if you are interested you can read our interview on the Swedish version of this page. Use the language switcher.) Instead I will share with you our short introduction to wines from the Moravia:
Morava (in Czech), Moravia (in English and in Latin) or Mähren (in German) is a region in south-eastern part of the Czech Republic. It borders Austria to the south, Slovakia to the east, and Poland on the north. It is mainly a mountainous landscape with a peak of 1490 meters. The region has three million inhabitants. The largest and best known city is Brno with about 800 000 inhabitants.
Czech wine
Agriculture, and particularly vine growing and wine production, is an important part of the Moravian economy. The region accounts for 94% of the Czech Republic’s total wine production. There are four sub-regions:
- Mikulovská,
- Znojemská,
- Velkopavlovická and
- Slovácká.
The most common white grape varieties are
- mulleer thurgau,
- gruner veltliner,
- welschriesling, and
- riesling
The most common red grape varieties are:
- saint laurent
- blaufränkrisch
- zweigelt, and
- pinot noir
The parallels with Austria are clearly visible.
The wines are classified in a “quality” hierarchy similar to the classic Germanic system, depending on the sugar content of the must (must weight) measured in “NM” (Normalizovaný Moštoměr):
- Kabinetní víno – “Kabinett” (cf. German Kabinett)
- Pozdní sběr – late harvested (Spätlese)
- Výběr z hroznů – selected grape bunches (Auslese)
- Výběr z bobulí – selected grapes (Beerenauslese)
- Výběr z cibéb – grapes with botrytis (Trockenbeerenauslese)
- Ledové víno – ice wine (eiswein)
- Slámové víno – “straw wines”, vin de paille / Strohwein
The labels usually indicate where the wine comes from, the grape variety and the quality grading.
We have unfortunately not recently had the occasion to taste any Czech wines not even those of the wine importer Morwine.
Read more about Czech wines on Wikipedia.
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Although BKWine organises wine tours to many of the world’s wine regions we have not yet had the opportunity to make a tour of the Czech wine regions. The closest we have come with our wine tours is Austria and Hungary.
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