Kyjov - Viticulture of Bohemian Brethren

The area where the town is located was already populated in prehistoric times. This is testified to by archaeological findings from the Paleolithic Age, Neolithic Age, late Stone Age, Bronze and Iron Ages, from the Roman era and from the time of migration of nations; there is also evidence for a Slavic settlement. In 1126 Prince Wenceslas of the city of Olomouc donated Kyjov to the monastery Hradisko u Olomouce and thus fulfilled the monks’ wish for a locality where they would grow grapes with sufficient production to cover their own needs for the noble drink – because wine was used not only for liturgical purposes, it was also a common drink and it was moreover used as medicine. In 1539, the monastery sold the town and the provincial head of Moravia Jan Kuna of Kunštát commenced construction of a renaissance town, which task was later continued by Wenceslaus Senior of Bzenec. Under his administration, Bzenec became a royal town and three town gates and an impressive renaissance town hall were built. A medieval wine procedure: Wine making in Kyjov in the Middle Ages not only provided a living for the town’s citizens, but also part of the social life and was of benefit to the town itself, too. Burghers of Kyjov very soon renovated vineyards destroyed during the Hussite wars and the main source of their income was the sale of wine at the field and in home barrooms. The wine procedure, a fortnightly sale of wines in houses, was a source of income often used to settle the most urgent debts. Especially the members of the church of Bohemian Brethren held viticulture in great esteem and participated in it heavily: they also bought vineyards in nearby settlements and constructed wine cellars under their burger houses. The development of viticulture in the town did not pause even when the Thirty Years' War set in, since this war, unlike in the other parts of Moravia, did only little harm to vineyards in the region of Kyjov. Selling wine in taprooms, an important prerogative of burghers in the 17th century, caused houses at the square and in adjacent streets to be furnished with the necessary equipment. The bar included an anteroom, and a so-called dancing room where dancing parties were held to boost the income of the bar. Gradual development leading to the establishment of grapevine-related professions is manifested by a piece of news saying that on 22 October 1686, the town council set a wage for labourers whose task was lowering barrels into cellars and pulling them out.   

In 1899, a new sample vineyard was planted in Kyjov with vines on American rootstock. The town provided a plot for this vineyard called Na Újezdě and a parish property, a land plot in the vine track Polámaný. In the 1930s, the town rented the vineyard to the local school of economy. 

The tradition of locking a mountain and vintage in the region of Kyjov was recorded in the 19th century, when the festivity was accompanied with sanctifying, sprinkling and smoking a mountain; the beginning of the vintage was announced by gunfire from rifles. The festive and ceremonial locking of the mountain took place at the end of August or at the beginning of September when grapes start ripening. Vineyard watchmen, so-called ‘hotaři’, gathered up nine flowers that they brought to a church for sanctification.  They rendered the flowers into several bunches which they hung on tall poles, then stuck these poles in the highest places in the vineyards – this was supposed to mean that the mountain had been locked. The establishment of the first wine cellars in the town was related not only to the taproom, but also to the need for better quality of wine and to the development of viticulture as such. Original pressing houses of cellars in Kyjov consisted, as a rule, of a single storey. Multistorey pressing houses are of later origin.   

Cellars in Nětčice

The first wine construction in Nětčice was a manorial cellar called a great cellar, due to its capacity of over 4000 bucketfuls of wine. The date over the entrance to the cellar gives the year 1780; nonetheless the cellar was used for storage of wine probably later – at the end of the 18^th century or so. The cellar was originally constructed as a storage place for potatoes used in Kyjov’s distillery, it also served for some time as an ice storage room. A stylish pressing house over the cellar was constructed later. The most renowned owner of the cellar was a renowned folklore expert from Kyjov, Jožka Sedlář, who restored the tradition of the feast of ‘Years of Slovácko’  (Slovácké roky). The significance of the cellar for social life in the town is described by Doctor Dunděra in his book ’33 lives’:  “That old cellar built during the era of Empress Maria Theresa under Janča’s pub and later a younger cellar built in 1896 have become cultural phenomena. Once I compared the cellar of Jožka Sedlář to the Slávia café in Prague, the place where intellectuals and artists meet. And essentially it was not an overstatement. Many writers and poets, painters and musicians have frequented the place, many actors and actresses including those from the theatre ‘Goose on a String’ (Divadlo na provázku) in Brno and the stage crew from the Film Academy of Musical Arts in Prague including the famous Czech actor Lubomír Lipský have been there too. In the last fifty years, the place has seen all ethnographers born in the Moravian land and all famous first violinists of the traditional musical band. Almost every prominent foreigner who visited Kyjov has also visited Jožka’s cellar, and thus its three chronicles contain records in English, German, French, Spanish, Polish, Finnish and even Japanese. Writer František Nepil worded the significance of the cellar on behalf of all the others: “All evening we savoured good and yet better wines. God, those were useful moments. How our horizons were broadened!” Since the beginning of the 19th century, other cellars have been built alongside the road to Janča’s pub. Among several newly-built pressing houses with cellars stands an old brick pressing house with a granary in the loft, its flat wooden ceiling being propped up on massive beams. An ancient and rich history relates to two last cellars in the lane. A two-hundred-year-old two-chamber Polášek’s cellar is equipped with stone vaulting, creating a narrow, almost rectangular corridor. A newly-built pressing house has a place to have a seat on the first floor and excellent wines are there for lovers of the sparkling drink. The pressing house of Šimeček’s cellar next door from 1882 was reconstructed at the beginning of the 20th century as living quarters. An adjacent farmhouse was used as a flat for poor citizens of the town. In 1984, the cellar and pressing house were reconstructed. Its current look is supposed to mimic the original appearance of the building.  

Cellars in Boršov

Some thirty years ago, the underground cellars of Boršov with brick before-cellar constructions, used to stand by the road to Bohuslavice. But then they had to give way to widening of the local road and the only colony in Boršov is now a one-sided row of cellars in the locality of Vývoz. Nevertheless these are not just any old cellars. They were usually placed in long escape routes leading as far as the road to Bukovany. An enormous Carter’s cellar (Formanův sklep) was created by constructing a vault over an underground space discovered by the owner of the plot during the repair of his house. A pressing house was also built over the deep cellar in the middle of the colony with a doorframe bearing the date 1748. The pressing room of an over-cellar house boasts a unique cupola design – this house has a colourful front embellished with a niche that contains a woodcutting of Saint Lawrence that can be seen in a garden just behind a wooden fence. Agricultural buildings of Southern Moravia also include a unique construction with a double-nave space, topped with brick vaulting of the flat Czech type. A flat dome, as a crown of a prestigious space, was used in towns and cities at the time of the high baroque and the early classicist building style. It was introduced to the countryside in the middle of the 19th century. It can be assumed that the construction of the pressing house with brick vaulting growing from massive stone walls dates back to this period, which assumption is substantiated by the fact that the building is plotted on maps from the era of Empress Maria Theresa. The ancient character of the unique building is intensified by its cellar itself. Winding vaulting of stones and bricks accompanied by an earthen floor ends in a short corridor where a cover in the floor obscures a mysterious hiding place. And in the old cellar, old-world manners and principles also govern. One of the owners of this charming building, Mr Sulecký, told me over a glass of delicious Neuburger without any sign of nostalgia about the end of his grape growing: “The vineyard is too far and my legs no longer serve me well; last year I harvested the grapes for the last time. Now, in the spring, before the bushes turn green, I will make them take me to the vineyard and stumping the soil will be the last service I am going to perform for the vineyard.