Lightning in the Cold

The story of Aleš Kovář is a story of parallel lives — of a man who treats water by day and makes wine by night, and who has found, in the old granite vineyards of Tasovice nad Dyjí, a terroir that demands nothing but patience. Originally from the Moravian border town of Znojmo, Aleš now lives in Rajhrad, a suburb of Brno, where he works for a water treatment facility. In his spare time — which is to say, every spare hour — he farms roughly half a hectare of rented vineyards in the vicinity of Tasovice, on the granite bedrock that defines the Znojmo wine sub-region. The vines are approximately fifty years old, traditional varieties planted long before the natural wine movement reached Moravia, and Aleš has rented them for the long term, committed to their preservation and their slow, honest expression.

Aleš is a lifelong friend of Martin Vajčner, the virtuoso vigneron whose zero-zero wines from the same Znojmo terroir have already achieved cult status, and he moves in the same tight circle as Michal Lacina and the reclusive Jakub Novák, a disciple of the late Petr Nejedlík of Dobrà Vinice. It was in this company — at tastings, in cellars, and at the Natural Wine Fest in Brno — that Aleš refined his philosophy. He is reflective by nature, with a well-deserved reputation for patience, and his winemaking is guided by a single, unyielding rule: nepřidávat a nebrat — add nothing, take nothing. No artificial additives. No filtration. No clarification. And since the 2021 vintage, no sulfites at any stage.

The road to total zero-zero was gradual. Previous vintages saw minimal additions of 5–10 mg/L of sulfur before bottling — a concession to caution that Aleš finally abandoned in 2021. That vintage, bottled in the spring after two or three cold winters of élevage, marked his arrival as one of Moravia's most uncompromising natural winemakers. The wines are not rushed; they are given enough time before they go into the bottle, and then they mature further in bottle. The result is a tiny portfolio — whites, orange-tinged skin-macerated wines, and a whisper of pét-nat — that captures the specific energy of Znojmo granite and the clarity that only long, cold ageing can provide. Aleš does not make wine to pay the bills; he makes it because the vineyards, the friends, and the granite demand it.

The guiding philosophy of Aleš Kovář is expressed in four Czech words that hang over every decision in the cellar: nepřidávat a nebrat — add nothing, take nothing. This is not a slogan; it is a methodology. Aleš does not add cultured yeasts, enzymes, tannins, or sugar. He does not filter. He does not clarify. And since the 2021 vintage, he does not add sulfites at any stage — not at harvest, not during fermentation, not at bottling. The result is wine that is nothing more than the transparent transformation of grape into liquid, with the granite terroir and the cold winter as the only shaping forces.

The methodology is deliberately patient and rigorously simple. Harvest is entirely manual, carried out in the early mornings or late evenings around Aleš's work schedule, and the grapes are transported in small containers to a small rented cellar in Tasovice, near that of his friend Jakub Novák. Every white variety — Riesling, Grüner Veltliner, Müller-Thurgau, Welschriesling — receives a brief maceration on the skins after picking. This is not orange-wine extremism; it is a gentle, purposeful extraction of phenolic texture and aromatic depth, a few hours or days that transform the juice from simple white to something more complex, more savoury, more true to the granite. Fermentation is spontaneous, initiated by the indigenous yeasts that live on the grape skins and in the cold cellar air.

After fermentation, the wines are aged for at least one year in wooden barrels, on the yeast lees, with no racking or intervention. This is where the cold Moravian winter becomes a co-winemaker: the low temperatures encourage natural clarification, slow oxidation, and the development of a texture that Ayscough describes as little lightning bolts — finely-etched and full of light. The 2021 vintage was aged for two, and in some cases three, cold winters before bottling — an eternity in a world where most white wines are bottled within six months. But Aleš is not in a hurry. The wines are given enough time before they go into the bottle, and then they mature for some more time in bottles before release. This is not negligence; it is the conviction that granite-grown whites, when handled without sulfur, need time to find their equilibrium.

The pét-nats are made with the same patience and the same zero-addition rigour. The Živíjo — from Riesling — and the Happy Cat-Nat — from Müller-Thurgau and Neuburger — are bottled during fermentation with no added sugar, no added yeast, and no dosage. They are disgorged or released as they are, with the natural sediment of the ancestral method, and they capture the same lightning-bolt energy as the still wines, but in effervescent form. The cellar is not a factory; it is a small, cold, patient space where time, granite, and wild yeast do the work, and Aleš provides the humility.

To understand Aleš Kovář, one must understand that he is not merely a winemaker; he is a water treatment worker who happens to make wine, a part-time vigneron who happens to produce some of Moravia's most incisive zero-zero whites, and a friend who happens to be part of a circle that is redefining the Znojmo terroir. Aleš is not an entrepreneur seeking expansion; he is a man who tends half a hectare because that is what his time allows, and who makes wine with the same precision he brings to water treatment — clean, patient, and essential. The identity of the project is defined by this doubleness: the Brno suburb and the Tasovice vineyard; the water facility and the rented cellar; the work week and the harvest weekend. The wine is made in the margins of a working life, and it carries the humility of that origin.

The identity is also defined by absence — the absence of sulfites, the absence of filtration, the absence of clarification, the absence of chemical sprays, the absence of a winery of his own, and the absence of hurry. These absences are not lacks; they are choices. Aleš does not filter because he believes the wine is complete as it is. He does not sulfite because he believes the vineyard and the cellar are clean enough to protect themselves. He does not own a winery because he believes the wine belongs to the terroir, not to a building. And he does not rush because he believes that granite-grown whites, when handled without sulfur, need time to find their equilibrium. The result is a portfolio of wines that are deliberately alive, deliberately specific to the half-hectare around Tasovice nad Dyjí, and deliberately challenging to the industrial norms of Moravian wine. They are not made to please a tasting panel; they are made to please the friends who drink them, the granite that shaped them, and the cold winters that clarified them.

The future of Aleš Kovář is tied to the continued health of his half-hectare, the deepening of his zero-zero commitment, and the gradual expansion of his patience. He is eager to go further — to experiment with longer élevage, to explore the forgotten varieties that still survive in the old vineyards, and to obtain more natural expressions from the fruit of his granite slopes. The Živíjo line will continue to be the Riesling pét-nat, the toast to life. The Happy Cat-Nat will continue to explore the playful side of Müller-Thurgau and Neuburger. The still wines will continue to evolve through cold winters, each vintage different from the last — fuller in 2018, balanced in 2019, lightning-bolt acidic in 2021. And Aleš will continue to work his shifts in Brno, to drive to Tasovice in the evenings, and to prove that a part-time vigneron, with half a hectare and infinite patience, can produce wines as honest as the water he treats.

In an age of increasing industrialisation in wine — of global varieties, engineered yeasts, and corporate consolidation — Aleš Kovář stands as a compelling alternative, not because he rejects modernity but because he has embraced a deeper modernity: one that values a half-hectare of rented old vines over a boardroom of consultants, fifty-year-old granite vineyards over new plantings, hand harvest in spare hours over machine picking, brief skin maceration over sterile juice, indigenous yeasts over inoculation, zero sulfites over standardised stability, no filtration over cosmetic clarity, one year in barrel on lees over six months in tank, three cold winters over summer bottling, the water treatment worker's patience over the marketing budget, and the specific voice of Znojmo's granite slopes over the standardised replication of a global style. Aleš Kovář is not merely making wine; he is proving that a part-time vigneron can become a zero-zero virtuoso, that a rented vineyard can become a living cellar, that a wine with no additives can possess the most profound identity, and that the simplest philosophy — add nothing, take nothing — is often the most profound. From the first experimental vintages around 2018 to the 2021 zero-zero release after three cold winters: all united in one bottle, one water-worker's second life, one unanswerable argument for the possibility of authentic, natural, zero-sulfite, hand-made, passionately honest wine from the granite heart of Znojmo.