Welcome to Czech wine country, a tapestry of green vineyards, glassy lakes and redroofed sandstone villages. Put away that stein — South Moravia has almost as many wine cellars as residents. Following decades of Communist-wrought destruction, this onceprestigious winemaking region is bouncing back — and throwing its doors open to visitors.
Brno, the region’s capital, is the Czech Republic’s second-largest city after Prague. On the surface, it’s a kaleidoscope of UNESCOlisted functionalism and Austro-Hungarian glamour, but it’s worth going deeper — literally — into Brno’s underground, where you’ll find shadowy catacombs and colonnaded 19th-century water tanks.
Catch a train south and you’ll pass factories on the fringes: it’s not for nothing that Brno was once called the ‘Moravian Manchester’. They’re soon replaced by hills knotted with vines. In the medieval towns of Znojmo and Mikulov, people spill out of bars, clinking glasses of Riesling and Pálava. Scattered throughout the region are the chateaux of former kings, their jewellery-box interiors undimmed thanks to careful maintenance. Just over the border is Vienna; German speakers once made up a huge portion
