How we make wine

Already previous generations of our family focused on a production of sacramental wines for liturgical purposes. In that spirit, we decided to continue, and therefore, of the hundreds of chemical and other preparations commonly used for vinification, on which the modern technology of today’s large-scale winery is based, we do not use any of them in the production of our wine. Sacramental wine production technology does not allow using anything extraneous. Containers and equipment must be completely dry when in contact with wine and no chemistry can be used other than sulfurization of the barrels (by burning a slice of sulfur in the barrel). The wine is made from pure wine juice, without pyrosulphite or sorban treatment, without the application of bentonite and is not fermented by any foreign laboratory yeast cultures (laboratory yeasts used in today’s large-scale wine production cause the uniformity of wines and such a wine lose its original characteristic smell and flavour).

The process of our wine production takes place naturally. When grape juice reaches the end of fermentation, it becomes a wine. The yeast sludge formed in the wine, sits on the bottom of the barrel. Our vinification is performed by repeatedly racking the clear wine from the yeast sludge and other sediments until the final state, when the wine reaches a “spark”.

Wine fermentation with natural yeast gives wine a unique flavor variety and a specific character of the area in which the grapes ripened. When drinking the wine from the area of Blatnice, you can feel the sun on your tongue, and each variety of our wine is different and typical of something else and beautiful in its own unique way. However, they have one thing in common: all the efforts of the winemaker are directed to the highest possible quality.

The grape juice for our wines is pressed mainly from grapes in the class quality late harvest or selection from grapes. This quality is achieved both by the location of the wine routes and by a targeted reduction of crops on a grape bush.

Wooden barrels are best suited for maturing the highest quality wines (here a micro oxidation and wine maturing can take place), but from an economic perspective those barrels are loss-making for winemakers. It is due to the fact that water evaporates from the wine through the pores of the wood (however alcohol and extract substances do not penetrate the wood, but remain). Therefore the wine becomes more concentrated, stronger, and better and more pronounced in taste and aroma – but at the expense of quantity. The wines maturing in a barrel constantly reduce their volume.

The barrels must be regularly inspected and topped up with wine of the same quality to keep them always full. Air is one of the greatest enemies of wine. Even the highest quality wine, if not stored in a full container, can spoil in a relatively short time. Regular topping of barrels is therefore an integral part of the winemaker’s work who produces wine in the traditional way. And records of it must be kept so that nothing is forgotten. These volume losses are not negligible: more than 5% of the wine volume is normally evaporated from barrels per year. Of course, modern winemaking technologies in plastic or stainless steel containers do not have these losses.

The traditional wine production technology is very rare nowadays, although it is the one that allows you to achieve high-quality wine. The production of such wine is far more demanding. Aroma of our wines is a resulting combination of the sun, soil, air and human labor. There is a piece of a winemaker’s life in such a wine.