The Wines of Vino Z Czech - Moravia, Czech Republic

A few months ago, I received an email from a guy named Noah who said he had stumbled across my site and had some wines that he thought I'd be interested to try.  He and his wife had recently started a wine importing company that was focused solely on wines from the Czech Republic and he was wondering if that might be something that would be up my alley. I had never had a wine from the Czech Republic before, so I told him I'd be delighted to give the wines a shot.  A few weeks ago, I wrote about the Welschriesling wines from their portfolio, but today I'd like to tell you a little bit about Vino z Czech and also a little bit about Czech Wine in general.

Noah Ullman worked for years in the eastern European branch of a major US software company.  He spent some time working the Czech Republic and would occasionally go out for a few drinks with his coworkers after a long day.  Most of the people would drink beer on these excursions, but Noah noticed that one of his Czech coworkers, Radim, always ordered wine.  The Czech Republic is generally known as a beer drinking and beer producing country, so Noah was intrigued by Radim's beverage choice.  When he asked him about it, Radim replied "I am from Moravia. We drink wine in Moravia."  Noah visited some Moravian wineries with Radim and fell in love with the wines there.  When he returned to the United States, he found that Czech wines were virtually impossible to find here, so he decided to change that.

Noah and his wife started Vino z Czech a year or so ago as a way to get Czech wines on US shelves.  Their model is a little bit different than most importers.  Radim is their exporter, and they consult with leading Czech sommeliers to try to find the top estate bottled wines in the country.  They work with a handful of producers, but as you will see below, all of the wines are bottled under the blanket Vino z Czech brand, and the specific producer is mentioned on the foil cap and the back label of each wine only.  The front labels pretty much give the name of the grape used (all of their bottlings are varietal wines right now) and have different paintings by Czech artist Alphonse Mucha, who you can read more about here.

I mentioned above that the Czech Republic is primarily associated with beer, but viticulture in the Moravian region can be traced back to the Romans around the second century AD. Recently, a Roman outpost was uncovered near the town of Pasohlávky that contained many viticultural artifacts, and it is thought by some historians that Grüner Veltliner and Welschriesling were probably introduced into the area during the Roman occupation.  Many of the French and German varieties (like Pinot Blanc and Riesling) were probably introduced into the area around the 13th Century as monasteries with monks from those countries settled into the region.  More vineyards were gradually planted over the next few centuries, but then the 30 Years War (1618-1648) wiped many of them out.  They were slowly replanted and the area received a major boost from the creation of a handful of wine academies during the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, but then Phylloxera first struck in the vineyards in 1890 and wreaked havoc on the area over the next 15 years.

During much of this time, the region was actually a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but in 1918, the nation of Czechoslovakia (which contained the modern-day Czech Republic, Slovakia and a bit of land currently in Russia) declared its independence and became a sovereign state.  It was annexed by Germany in 1938 and was part of Nazi Germany until 1945.  Following World War II, Czechoslovakia became a communist state, which is generally not all that beneficial for a country's wine industry (as we saw when we took a look at the Pinela grape).  The Communist government in Czechoslovakia was overthrown in the Velvet Revolution of 1989 and the country peacefully split into the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic (also known as Slovkia) in 1993. In 1995, the Czech Republic passed Wine Act No. 115/1995 in an attempt to establish wine laws that would bring the country's wine industry into line with the rest of the EU. The Czech Republic formally joined the EU in 2004 and passed Wine Act No. 321/2004, which brought their regulations into line with the rest of Europe.  The Czech Republic's classification system is more closely related to that of Germany and Austria, where ripeness level at harvest is the primary determinant for quality level classification.  There is also a geographical classification ranging from Region, to Sub-Region, to Village to Vineyard (for details on Czech wine law, you can read more here).

Map of Czech Republic with Moravia in red

Moravia is by far the most important wine making region in the Czech Republic, accounting for 96% of the total vineyard area of the country (there are some vines in Bohemia, towards the northwest of the country, but they are scattered and make up a minor part of the industry).  Most of the production is located around the River Dyje in Moravia, and there are four main sub-regions: Mikulovská, Znojemská, Velkopavlovická, and Slovaká (more information about these regions can be found here).  There really is no single dominant variety in the region, and most of the grapes grown have been brought in from other countries.  For white varieties, Müller-Thurgau leads the way with 11.2% of total plantings, followed by Grüner Veltliner with 11%, Welschriesling with 8.5%, Riesling with 7%, Pinot Blanc with 5%, Sauvignon Blanc with 5% and Chardonnay with 4% (among others).  For red vines, St. Laurent is the most widely planted grape with 9% of total plantings, followed by Blaufrankish at 5.6%, Zweigelt at 4.7%, Pinot Noir at 4% and Blauer Portugieser at 3.9%.  

Vino z Czech sent me eight total wines to sample, all of which were white.  I took a look at their two Welschriesling wines a few days ago, and interested readers can check those reviews out here.  The other six wines, made from the Riesling, Grüner Veltliner, Rivaner (Müller-Thurgau), Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Blanc grapes, are reviewed below.  All of the wines were from the Moravia region of the Czech Republic, but I'm not sure about sub-regions or anything more specific.  These wines are available online here.  Again, these bottles were sent to me as samples for review and I was not compensated in any way for these reviews other than with the bottles themselves.

The first Vino z Czech wine that I tried was the 2011 Riesling from the Michlovsky vineyard.  This wine is available from their online retailer for $19.  In the glass the wine was a fairly light silvery lemon color.  The nose was moderately intense with aromas of peach, pear, lime peel, lemon, white flowers, honey and chalk.  On the palate the wine was on the lighter side of medium with high acidity.  It was dry with racy lemon-lime citrus, white peach, and honeysuckle flower with clean, stony minerals on the finish.  It was a bit tight and austere right out of the bottle, but with a little time and a little increase in temperature, the hard citrus fruits opened up into more stone fruit and honey.  It is drinking well right now, but it is definitely the kind of wine I'd like to be able to revisit in a few years, as I feel like it has the structure to stand up to a few years in the bottle.  Fans of Austrian Riesling will definitely find a lot to like here, though fans of softer, sweeter Rieslings may want to look elsewhere for their fix.

Next up was the 2011 Sauvignon Blanc, which was also from the Michlovsky vineyard.  Retail on this bottle is also $19 online.  In the glass the wine was a medium lemon gold color.  The nose was fairly intense with aromas of white grapefruit, grapefruit peel, cut grass, cat pee and green melon (in other words, it was a classic Sauvignon Blanc nose).  On the palate the wine was medium bodied with medium acidity.  There were flavors of white grapefruit, grapefruit peel, white pear, lemon, tart pineapple, cut grass, green bell pepper, chalk and clean river stones.  The palate was also full of classic Sauvignon Blanc flavors, but it was backed with a really nice minerality that I found in many of these wines.  This wine was much closer stylistically to French Sauvignon Blanc from Sancerre or other parts of the Loire Valley than to the leaner, grassier New Zealand or the big, fleshy California Sauvignon Blancs out there.  I thought it was an excellent wine and would have no problem shelling out $20 for it.

Next on the list was the 2011 Rivaner from Chateau Valtice ($16).  Rivaner is just another name for Müller-Thurgau which hearkens back to the days when it was thought to be the result of a crossing between Riesling and Sylvaner (it isn't, as we learned).  The term Rivaner still hangs around, though Müller-Thurgau is really the most accurate name.  In the glass, the wine was a medium silvery lemon color.  The nose was fairly light and subtle with aromas of pear, golden apple, grapefruit and white peach.  On the palate the wine was medium bodied with fairly high acidity.  It was maybe just a touch off-dry with flavors of white peach, pink grapefruit, pear, golden apple and honeysuckle flower.  It was a mild, delicate, subtle wine that did resemble Riesling to some extent, but with the volume turned down.  My primary concern with this wine is that it is bottled with a synthetic (plastic) cork, so if you decide to try a bottle, get the newest vintage you can and drink it as soon as possible.  I have found that wines under this type of closure go downhill much faster than those under screwcap or traditional cork.

The 2011 Grüner Veltliner from Michlovsky was next out of the box, and it retails for about $16 online.  In the glass the wine was a medium silvery lemon color.  The nose was fairly intense with aromas of lemon, white peach, braised celery, grass and grapefruit.  On the palate the wine was on the lighter side of medium with fairly high acidity.  There were flavors of white pear, lemon peel, grapefruit, braised celery, cracked white pepper and a mild, stony mineral finish.  If you inserted this wine into a blind tasting of Austrian Grüners, I think you'd probably have a tough time singling it out.  Grüner can make a big, powerful wine, but it can also make something a little more delicate, and this wine definitely falls into that latter category.  There were really nice savory notes that would help this wine complement a variety of vegetable dishes, especially those with bell peppers or summer squash.  It's not something that I would try to cellar, though, so drink it early and drink it often.

Vino z Czech offers two wines made from the Pinot Blanc grape from two different producers.  The first one I tried was their 2009 offering from the Vyskocil vineyard ($22).  It can be difficult to tell some of these wines apart just from their front labels, and for the two Pinot Blancs, I had to use the alcohol content on the front to differentiate the two (this one was 13.5% while the other was 13%).  In the glass, the wine was a medium lemon gold color.  The nose was moderately intense with aromas of apricot, coconut, pineapple and green melon with a touch of butter and vanilla (there is some oak going on here).  On the palate the wine was on the fuller side of medium with fairly high acidity.  There were flavors of lime, white peach, toasted coconut, and green melon with a steely mineral backbone.  I am a big fan of Pinot Blanc and think it is one of the more underrated grape varieties out there, and this is a really nice example.  It's very well balanced across the board and was really a pleasure to drink.  A little bottle age probably wouldn't hurt it, but I wouldn't get too crazy with it.

Last but certainly not least is the 2009 Pinot Blanc from the Spielberg vineyard, which is Vino z Czech's top offering and costs about $38 a bottle.  In the glass the wine was a fairly deep lemon gold color.  The nose was fairly intense with aromas of brioche, baked apple, pineapple, butter, cheese, coconut and vanilla.  On the palate the wine was full bodied with fairly high acidity.  There were flavors of creamy golden apple, pear, toasty brioche, pineapple, toasted coconut, butter, lemon curd and vanilla.  This wine also saw some time in oak, but again, I thought it carried it very well and the overall result was a lovely, balanced wine.  As a personal preference, I'm not a big fan of oak in my white wines at all, so I found that I preferred the Vyskocil Pinot Blanc, but those who are more tolerant and/or enthusiastic about oaked white wines would be better served with this wine.  It's not a style I typically enjoy, but I do recognize that it is a very good wine for those who like that kind of thing.

Overall, I was very impressed with the wines of Vino z Czech.  Their offerings retained much of the classic characteristics of the grapes they are working with, but they also have a really lovely minerality that makes them distinctive and gives them a sense of place.  I will confess that I was not optimistic when Noah first contacted me about trying his wines, but all of them were really lovely.  They are just starting to bring some red wines that I hope to be able to try as well, and I will certainly write about them if I get a chance to try them.  In the meantime, check out their site, try some Czech wines and na zdraví (to your health)!

Müller-Thurgau - Alto Adige, Italy

It may be a stretch to consider Müller-Thurgau a fringe grape.  It is planted on about 40,000 acres of land in Germany alone and as recently as the early 1990's, it was the most widely planted grape in that country (Riesling surpassed it in the late 1990's and has been pulling away ever since).  There are also significant plantings of Müller-Thurgau in Austria, Switzerland, northern Italy, Slovenia and much of eastern Europe, and Müller-Thurgau is thought to be the most widely planted deliberate crossing on earth.  I was on the fence about including Müller-Thurgau here, but there were a few things that swayed my decision.  First of all, it was much more difficult than I thought to actually buy a bottle of varietal Müller-Thurgau wine.  Secondly, when I finally did find a bottle, it was from Italy and not Germany, which isn't all that unusual, but it's not all that common either.  The biggest reason I decided to write about Müller-Thurgau, though, was because of the really interesting story of its pedigree, and how that pedigree remained a mystery for more than 100 years.  Much of the information below can be found in this paper, which ultimately solved the mystery of Müller-Thurgau's parentage in 2000, 118 years after its creation, and any papers that are not directly linked below are cited in that piece (most of them are in German and so even if I could access them, I'd have no idea what they said).

The Müller-Thurgau grape was created in 1882 by Dr. Herman Müller, who was born in the Swiss Canton (something akin to a state in the US) of Thurgau, which is located in the northeastern part of Switzerland.  Thurgau is bordered to its northeast by Lake Constance, which separates Switzerland from southwestern Germany.  Dr. Müller created this grape, known as No. 58, while he was working at the Geisenheim institute in Germany, but took it with him (along with the cuttings of about 150 other seedlings he had been working on) when he assumed the role of director at a research institution in Switzerland in 1891.  No. 58 was first propagated in 1897, and in 1913, a Franconian grapevine inspector named August Dern brought cuttings of the vine back into Germany.  Dern gave the grape the name Müller-Thurgau, and by 1930, experimental plots of the vine were being grown in every winegrowing region in Germany.  Müller-Thurgau plantings soared after WWII when Germany was trying to rebuild their wine industry and replant their vineyards quickly, as Müller-Thurgau is a generous yielder that is very easy to work with in the vineyard and the winery.  Plantings have been steadily declining in Germany since the late 1970's, but it is still responsible for about 15% of the total plantings in Germany, and is the 2nd most planted grape in that country.

The parentage for No. 58 was given as Riesling x Silvaner, but doubts about this were raised quickly.  Dr. Müller wrote a letter to Dern at one point informing him that the cuttings that he brought into Germany from his lab were not the offspring of a Riesling x Silvaner cross, but no correct parentage was offered by Dr. Müller either.  Some believed that the vine was a selfling of Riesling, meaning that a Riesling vine pollinated another Riesling vine and the resulting seed was planted.  An ampelographical study done in 1957 by a man named Eichelsbacher attempted to rule out Silvaner as a parent by analyzing the shapes of the leaves and tips of Riesling, Silvaner, Müller-Thurgau, but ampelography has never been an exact science and Eichelsbacher's theory never gained universal acceptance.

In 1994, a German research team performed an RAPD analysis (an early form of genetic testing that has been supplanted by microsatellite testing in more recent years) on Riesling, Silvaner and Müller-Thurgau (source).  Their analysis was able to show that Riesling was one of the parents of Müller-Thurgau, but Silvaner definitely was not the other.  In 1996, another German research team proposed that the other parent could be a member of the Chassleas family and their research seemed to confirm their hunch.  Their analysis only analyzed 8 microsatellite markers, though, and most scientists believe that at least 20 sites should be analyzed for conclusive results.  In 1997, another research group ran a more extensive analysis and were able to rule out Chasselas as a parent of Müller-Thurgau, but they discovered that it was a grandparent.  The other parent of Müller-Thurgau was actually a grape called Admirable de Courtiller, which is a table grape bred by a guy named Courtiller in the 19th Century by crossing Chasselas with Bicane.

The DNA evidence was unequivocal, but many found the results hard to believe.  Müller-Thurgau did not resemble Admirable de Courtiller at all physically and you would expect that some physical characteristics would be passed on from a parent to its offspring.  In 2000, another German research team set out to re-test Riesling, Admirable de Courtiller and Müller-Thurgau.  The team requested leaf samples for each of the vines from two different holding facilities.  The first set of samples came from Kolsterneuburg, Austria, which was where the 1997 research group got their material, while the second set came from Geilweilerhof, Germany.  Once the leaves arrived from each institution, the team noticed that the samples for Admirable de Courtiller from each institution didn't match one another at all.  Their ampelographic analysis led them to believe that the sample from Kolsterneuburg was actually from a grape called Madeleine Royale, which is a fairly common table grape bred in the mid 19th Century.

What had happened was essentially the same thing that happened with Hondarrabi Zuri in Spain.  The accession for Madeleine Royale was mislabeled in Kolsterneuburg as Admirable de Courtiller, and so the team that obtained their samples from that holding facility in 1997 were misled as a result.  When the 2000 research group ran the parentage studies on the correct version of Admirable de Courtiller, they were able to rule it out as a parent.  The group also checked Madeleine Royale as a parent and confirmed that Müller-Thurgau was the result of crossing Riesling and Madeleine Royale.

The story isn't quite over, though.  A guy named Moreau-Robert created Madeleine Royale in 1845, but there was no record of the grape's parentage.  It was long suspected to be an offspring of Chasselas, but its pedigree wasn't scientifically investigated until 2010 when a Swiss duo was able to conclusively show that Chasselas could not be a parent to Madeleine Royale.  What was more surprising, though, is that they were able to show that Pinot and Schiava Grossa were almost certainly the real parents of Madeleine Royale, meaning that Pinot and Schiava are also the grandparents of Müller-Thurgau.

There is still some confusion in many reference materials about Müller-Thurgau's true parentage.  Oz Clarke's Grapes & Wines and Stephen Brook's The Wines of Germany continue to list the parents as Riesling x Admirable de Courtiller, and when I first learned about Müller-Thurgau a few years ago, the material that I was reading (which I can't recollect or seem to find again) listed the parentage as Riesling x Silvaner.  This mistaken parentage is perhaps still perpetrated in part by the fact that one of Müller-Thurgau's most widely accepted synonyms is Rivaner which is clearly just a contraction of Riesling and Silvaner.  There are a lot of German crossings that were the result of a Riesling x Silvaner cross, because many scientists have been trying to combine the quality of Riesling and the hardiness and high yields of Silvaner, but so far none have been particularly successful.

I was able to try a 2008 Andrian0 Müller-Thurgau from the Alto Adige region of Italy.  I picked this bottle up for about $13 locally.  In the glass the wine was a medium lemon gold color with a greenish tint.  The nose was fairly intense with white pear, lemon, white flowers and peach.  On the palate the wine was medium bodied with medium acidity.  There were flavors of tart green apple, lemon, pear and under-ripe pineapple.  It finished with a bitter, pithy kind of flavor that wasn't all that nice.  Overall this wine was fairly non-descript and average, as a lot of wines made from this grape tend to be.  The Oxford Companion to Wine calls it "the bane of German wine production" because of the oceans of bland, sickly sweet wines that were pumped out of Germany from the 1970's up to the modern day.  This is better than most of the junk that comes out of Germany under the Müller-Thurgau or Rivaner name, but it's still nothing all that exciting.  The story of the grape is definitely more fascinating than the wines that are made from it.