The Volcanic Playground & the Zero-Sulfur Experiment

The story of David Kušický begins with his grandfather, Ján Domin — a viticulturist and ecologist who, after a career managing one of the largest state wine cooperatives in Czechoslovakia, founded NATURAL Domin & Kušický in 1996 in Veľký Krtíš, on the edge of the Krupinská planina. It was not merely a family winery; it was Slovakia's first certified organic winery, born from Ján's conviction that the only honest wine was one grown without synthetic chemicals in healthy, living soil. In 1998, Diana Domin and her husband Tibor Kušický planted the first certified organic vineyard at Katovka, establishing a legacy that their children — David and his sister Patrícia — would inherit.

David grew up in the village of Vinica, a name that literally means 'vineland' in Slovak, where every family owned a piece of vineyard and made their own wine. He spent weekends in the small family vineyard as a child and worked in the winery during summers as a student. After graduating in viticulture and oenology from Mendel University in Brno in 2019, he returned to Veľký Krtíš not to replicate his family's classical organic wines but to create something radical within them — a separate, experimental line that would break stereotypes about Central Slovak wine and introduce the region to the global natural wine community.

Before settling back home, David travelled and interned with natural winemakers around the world, absorbing techniques and philosophies from producers working without sulfur, without oak, and without industrial shortcuts. These travels shaped his vision: he would use the estate's certified organic fruit — 40 hectares of volcanic vineyards farmed with copper, sulfur, and mechanical weed management — but vinify it with spontaneous fermentation, zero additions, and an irreverent creativity that changes from vintage to vintage. His parents and sister handle the classical Domin & Kušický line; David's wines are the wild, playful, unrepeatable experiments that emerge from the same vineyards but speak a different language.

The estate today is a polycultural ecosystem as much as a winery. A sizable flock of sheep grazes the vineyards, controlling weeds and providing natural fertiliser. Bee colonies pollinate the surrounding flora. The family keeps emu, falcons, goats, and rabbits — not as attractions but as integral parts of a biodiversity strategy that reduces the need for any chemical intervention. David's goal is to eventually convert the entire estate to biodynamic certification, but for now, the organic regime — certified by UKSUP and NATURALIS — provides the clean, healthy fruit that makes zero-sulfur winemaking possible. As David says, his aim is to break myths and stereotypes with wines from a region that most drinkers have never heard of.

The winemaking philosophy of David Kušický is governed by a single, uncompromising principle: the fruit must speak, and nothing must get in its way. Having trained in classical oenology and then immersed himself in the global natural wine community, David has stripped away every element that he considers unnecessary or masking: no oak, no selected yeasts, no temperature manipulation, no enzymes, no fining agents, no filtration, and no added sulfur dioxide. The result is a style of natural winemaking that is exuberant, fruity, and deliberately low in alcohol — wines that prioritise drinkability, joy, and transparency over power, structure, or conventional prestige.

Fermentation is entirely spontaneous, carried out by indigenous yeasts that arrive on the grape skins from the organic vineyards. David vinifies in stainless steel tanks and concrete eggs — vessels chosen specifically for their neutrality. Concrete, with its thermal mass and slight porosity, allows for slow, steady fermentation and gentle micro-oxygenation without imparting any flavour of its own. Steel preserves the primary fruit and freshness. There is not a whisper of oak in David's cellar; he believes that wood, even old wood, imposes a vocabulary of toast and vanilla that obscures the volcanic minerality and fruit character of his vineyards. The wines are thus naked, unadorned, and immediate.

The extractions are soft, even in the orange and skin-contact wines. David uses lees intelligently — both to protect the wine from oxidation and to add texture and savoury complexity without aggressive maceration or punching down. The whites and orange wines receive enough skin contact to extract colour and tannic grip, but the process is gentle, producing wines that are textured rather than harsh, savoury rather than astringent. The reds are fermented whole-berry or with partial whole-cluster, depending on the vintage, with short to medium macerations that preserve freshness and prevent the over-extraction that can plague natural red wines.

Sulfur is never added — not during harvest, not during fermentation, not at bottling. The wines are bottled unfined and unfiltered, carrying their natural sediment, native yeasts, and living microbial populations into the bottle. This is possible only because the fruit is grown organically on healthy, biodiverse soils; the grapes arrive at the cellar with robust natural defences that make chemical protection redundant. The wines are typically low in alcohol — often between 10% and 12% — reflecting David's preference for early-harvested, high-acid fruit that ferments dry without chaptalisation. The result is a portfolio of wines that are wild, unpretentious, and immediately pleasurable: white gummy bears and lychee in the Muscat, crushed berries in the co-ferments, and a fizzy, pet-nat energy in the sparkling cuvées.

To understand David Kušický, one must understand the myth-breaker — a young winemaker who refuses to accept that Central Slovakia is a viticultural backwater, or that Slovak wine must be oaky, sulfured, and conventional to be taken seriously. David's entire project is a sustained argument against these assumptions. He uses the same volcanic soils that produce Tokaj's greatness. He farms with the same organic rigour as the best estates in Burgundy. He ferments with the same wild freedom as the natural winemakers of the Loire and Jura. And he bottles with the same zero-sulfur conviction as the most radical producers in Georgia or Catalonia. The only difference is the postcode — and David is determined to prove that the postcode is irrelevant.

The volcanic playground identity that David has cultivated is equally central. The Krupinská planina is not merely a backdrop; it is the creative engine of his wines. The andesite, basalt, and tuff provide a mineral complexity and smoky undertone that give even his lightest, most playful wines a geological depth. The volcanic soils force the vines to struggle, producing small berries with thick skins and concentrated flavours that can withstand — even thrive under — the zero-sulfur, spontaneous fermentations that define his style. The volcanic playground is not a marketing slogan; it is a measurable reality of soil chemistry, root depth, and mineral uptake that manifests in every glass.

The future of David Kušický is tied to the continued evolution of the family estate toward biodynamic certification, the expansion of his experimental line into new varieties and new techniques, and the gradual introduction of Central Slovak natural wine to global markets. David will continue to make wines that change from vintage to vintage — never repeating a formula, always responding to the fruit, the weather, and his own creative impulse. The Serotonin will continue to bring joy. The Hey Mate! will continue to fizz. The Katovka will continue to honour the family's first organic vineyard. And the Hron! will continue to prove that Slovak red wine can be light, fresh, and natural.

In an age of increasing homogenisation in wine — of engineered yeasts, oak chips, and sulfur blankets — David Kušický stands as a compelling alternative, not because he rejects Slovakia but because he has embraced a different Slovakia, one that values volcanic soils over flatland fertility, organic farming over chemical convenience, spontaneous fermentation over selected yeasts, concrete eggs over new barrels, zero sulfur over stability at all costs, and the specific voice of the Krupinská planina over the standardised replication of a global style. David Kušický is not merely making wine; he is building a legacy — from his grandfather's organic dream in 1996 to his own natural wine experiments in the 2020s, from the village of Vinica to the export markets of Europe and America, from volcanic tuff to the unfiltered bottle. The first organic winery, the volcanic plateau, the sheep, the concrete eggs, the zero sulfur, the playful labels, and the name that is breaking myths about Slovak wine: all united in one bottle, one slope, one unanswerable argument for the possibility of authentic, place-specific, creatively evolving natural wine in the heart of Central Slovakia.