The Austerlitz Terroir & the Stará hora

The story of Vinařství Vykoukal begins in 1996 with a hobby — a few hundred vines, several hectolitres of wine, and a man who fell in love with the grape. Zdeněk Vykoukal did not inherit a centuries-old estate; he built one from curiosity, patience, and an increasingly obsessive relationship with a single hillside. For sixteen years he learned by doing, tending his vines on the slopes above Hostěrádky-Rešov, reading the seasons, and gradually understanding that the wine from Stará hora was different — more mineral, more structured, more stubborn — than the wines his neighbours made from gentler soils.

In 2012, Zdeněk formalised his education, completing his studies at the Faculty of Horticulture of Mendel University in Lednice — one of the most respected wine schools in Central Europe. The diploma gave him theoretical grounding, but it did not change his instinct: that the best wine is the one that requires the least intervention, and that the vineyard, not the cellar, is where quality is determined. What began as a weekend passion had become a family business in its true form — a phrase Zdeněk uses with quiet pride, acknowledging that the transition from hobby to profession was not planned but inevitable.

Today, the winery is a true family operation. Zdeněk tends the vines and makes the wine. Alenka handles planning. Lubomír manages the business. Vladimír tastes — an essential role in a cellar that prizes sensory judgement over laboratory metrics. And above them all, as Zdeněk writes with characteristic candour: "Everything in our family revolves around the vine, she writes us calendars, she decides whether we are happy or sad… everything obeys her. Yes, it is hard and yes, it is beautiful." This is not a marketing narrative; it is the daily reality of a family that has surrendered its rhythm to the agricultural calendar of a single limestone hill.

For Zdeněk Vykoukal, the goal is not to make wine that pleases everyone; it is to make wine that could only come from Stará hora. The guiding philosophy is one of disciplined minimalism: capture the original experience of the grape, allow the terroir to speak, and intervene only when the wine's integrity demands it. This begins in the vineyard with organic farming on steep, calcareous slopes, and it continues in the cellar with a regimen that is radical in its simplicity — no selected yeasts, no additives, no fining, and only the lightest possible filtration for select whites.

All grapes are hand-harvested from the family's own vineyards and brought immediately to the cellar. Fermentation occurs spontaneously with indigenous yeasts in a combination of acacia and oak barrels — the acacia chosen for its neutrality and fine grain, which preserves the primary aromatics of white varieties while adding a silky, textured mouthfeel; the oak providing structure, micro-oxygenation, and the subtle vanilla-spice framework that supports the fuller-bodied reds and Chardonnay. The family does not chase fashion in wood; they choose barrels that serve the terroir rather than mask it.

The wines are not fined — clarification occurs naturally through sedimentation and time. For white wines that require it, filtration is performed only with kieselguhr (diatomaceous earth), and even then not heavily — a deliberate restraint that preserves the wine's natural texture and aromatic complexity. Sulphur dioxide is used only in minimal amounts, sufficient to protect the wine during bottling and early transport but never enough to dominate the wine's natural expression. The result is a style that Zdeněk describes with precision: high minerality, almost salinity after longer maturation, full and well-structured, broader and more layered than primarily aromatic and welcoming. These are not wines for the casual drinker seeking immediate fruit; they are wines for the table, for gastronomy, and for the patient collector who understands that limestone terroir demands time to reveal its full vocabulary.

This approach places Vinařství Vykoukal squarely within the Autentista Moravia Magna tradition — a charter that demands low-intervention practices, indigenous fermentation, and absolute respect for the vineyard's voice. Yet Zdeněk is not an ideologue; he is a pragmatic perfectionist with a university diploma and dirt under his fingernails. He knows the chemistry of spoilage, the biology of yeast, and the physics of filtration — and he has chosen, armed with that knowledge, to do as little as possible. The result is wine that is natural not by ignorance but by intention, and that carries the unmistakable signature of Austerlitz: mineral, saline, structured, and true.

Vinařství Vykoukal is not merely a winery; it is a family covenant with a single hillside — a proof that the Slavkov battlefield, two centuries after Napoleon's armies marched across it, can produce wine of world-class mineral intensity and structural honesty. In an era when the Velkopavlovická sub-region is often associated with large-scale production and commercial accessibility, the Vykoukal family has proven that 1.3 hectares of steep limestone slope, farmed organically and made with minimal intervention, can produce wines of unmistakable identity — wines that taste of nowhere else but Stará hora.

The legacy of Vykoukal is the legacy of patient, educated minimalism. Zdeněk's diploma from Mendel University gave him the tools to intervene; his instinct as a hobby winemaker taught him not to. The family's membership in Autentista Moravia Magna since 2009 places them among the founding generation of Czech natural-wine standard-bearers, yet their philosophy is not rebellion — it is restraint. The acacia barrels, the light kieselguhr filtration, the minimal sulfur, and the absolute refusal to use selected yeasts or additives are not gestures of defiance but acts of respect for a terroir that is already eloquent.

The future of the estate is tied to the future of the Stará hora vineyard and the family that tends it. As the Vykoukals continue to farm their 2 hectares in organic regime, as Alenka plans, Lubomír manages, Vladimír tastes, and Zdeněk walks the steep rows with the same curiosity he brought to the vineyard in 1996, the project remains what it has always been: a family whose calendars are written by the vine. The story of Vinařství Vykoukal is the story of a hobby that became a philosophy — still growing, still learning, still proving that the best wine from Austerlitz is the one that needs no explanation, only a glass, a meal, and the patience to let the limestone speak.