Vlčnov - Pressing houses without cellars protected as cultural monuments 

“The day before Palm Sunday I was in Vlčnov and went to see the wine house of the farmer Ondrúšek, which used to be a búda of his great grandfather with a very old date inscription. This búda is cuddled up to a mountain and not only hides a massive oak press dated 1823, but also serves as an antechamber for a shrine from which place you approach a barrel in the second room placed on a wooden ledge. From this barrel, from its bowels, you use a wine taster to draw this year’s wine, and then this yellow and green drink goes down the throat swig after swig, while the tongue goes smack-smack. This happens at ‘the sacrificial table’, which is not a table at all but side planks of the press...” These words commence the narrative of journalist and collector Ferdinand Práger from Uherský Brod about his visit to búdas in Vlčnov. This charming column was published in the magazine Rozkvět 70 years ago. And the set for wine tasting in the búdas of Pod Kojinama has not changed since. Vlčnov is located in a region inhabited since time immemorial, in the middle of a basin at the outer perimeter of the White Carpathian Nature Reservation. Settlement of the area in the modern times is directly linked to the Great Moravia Empire. Historians think it possible that the place was permanently inhabited as early as the 10th century. The first written reference to a settlement called Vlčnov is dated 3 March 1264. It may be assumed that grapes were already grown there in the days of the Great Moravia Empire. Nonetheless, the development of this industry is definitely related to the economic activities of a nearby monastery of Cistercians at Velehrad. The wine of Vlčnov is said to have been most popular in the 16th and 17th century. This is also the time when the communal seal with a vine grape and vine grower’s knife came into existence. The north-eastern peripheral region endows local wines with the taste and nose of striking acids – but bad years also mean a lack of sugar. That's why producers of wine used to go to Vlčnov in the 19th century for must that they used to add acidity to their wine. As in many other settlements, the most valued vine track there is the Old Mountain (Stará hora) planted, same as the vineyards of Kojiny and Pod Kojinami, with cultivars of Müller-Thurgau, Pinot blanc  and White Riesling. More sensitive blue grapes yield an interesting Lamberger in good years. The calamity of phylloxera also affected this area under the hill of Myšince. Viticulture in the surrounding villages (Veletiny and Havřice) has never recovered from this blow and practically disappeared. Renovation of viticulture in Vlčnov at the beginning of the 20th century is mainly to be credited to Isidor Lhotský, the director of the school of economy in Uherský Brod.

Wooden presses – examples of masterful craftsmanship 

Above-ground búdas as part of the vineyards in Vlčnov are mentioned by Pavel Bravenec in 1544. According to historian Jan Kučera from Uherský Brod, Vlčnov was burnt down by Hungarian rebels in 1707 and 50 wine buildings were destroyed by the fire. The register map from 1826 indicates 200 búdas in several localities under vineyards. Only two of them had a cellar underneath – the lord's cellar and the dean’s cellar. Other búdas were very simple, the oldest of them made of wood with a solid oak skeleton. The newest style, built in the 19th century, was made of adobe brick – so called ‘vepřovice’. The búda was covered with a thatched roof slanting in four directions, the gable wall being fitted with a dormer. The last thatched-roofed búda burnt down in 1979. Some hundred years ago, búdas were to be found at the bottom fringes of the vine tracks Stará Hora, Kojiny and Pod Kojiny and they were linked in a semi-arch to similar buildings in the neighbouring villages of Havřice and Veletiny. But after the First World War, some of them were converted into residential houses because of a lack of flats and merged with the surrounding buildings. Only one colony of búdas on the vine track Kojiny pod Starou Horou has been preserved – this colony was declared a historic monument reservation in 1995 as a result of its unique character. The local single-storey pressing houses without cellars represent a unique type of vineyard building that can be found only in the region of Uherský Brod. The oldest pressing houses are built of adobe bricks or of earth rammed into wooden boarding. A simple preserved technology of timberwork is not characteristic for Slovácko. The inside of the búda is made of a spacious pressing house mostly occupied by a screw press and a rear small chamber used for fermentation and storage of wine. The surface finish corresponds to traditional customs. Walls are whitewashed and the plinth section is highlighted by a blue stripe. Ceilings in pressing houses are made of beams. Original floors of rammed earth are covered in some búdas with modern materials. Original wooden presses, examples of masterful craftsmanship, nowadays represent only a rare decorative complement to pressing houses. There is a nice view over the region from the complex of búdas in Vlčnov when the weather is nice – you can see the mountain ridges of the White Carpathians, Velký Lopeník and Javořina.