Milan Nestarec - "Kiddo" (SKINS) Moravia Pet Nat 2024 750ml (11% abv)
WINE CLUB SELECTION - SEPT. 2025
another winner from the Czech Republic!
cool & clean bubbly amber wine with some real depth, Italian soda vibes
Mickey Mouse just became part of public domain!
2/3 on skins, kept in pressurized tanks to preserve natural bubble,
Winemaker’s note: “Some wines are born in chateaux, others in a bouncy castle. Sparkling whole-bunch Pinot Gris! (With a bit of Pinot Noir for extra fun.) As the name suggests, this wine winks back at my early years, when I went for style over seriousness. This wine is definitely a light-hearted, easy-drinking stuff with 10% ABV only. No need to think about soil or fancy barrels, just good ol’ fizzy fun here. The perfect spring release material.”
Grapes: Pinot Gris, tiny bit of Pinot Noir
Vineyard: Slovenské vineyard in Moravský Žižkov village, Velkopavlovická, in the Moravia region. Clay soil, Organic (certified by ABCERT), planted in 2001.
Vinification: Grapes were hand-harvested and sorted by hand in September 2023. Whole bunch, gently pressed for free run juice only. Spontaneous fermentation on the skins and stems until 2/3 done, then finished in pressure tank to keep the CO2 in for 7 days. Unfined, unfiltered, no added SO2. Bottled in March
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Owner & winemaker: Milan Nestarec, wife Mirka Nestarcová, and their family
Vineyard area: 24 hectares (= 60 acres), estate-owned
Vineyard management: organic certified (since 2022, practicing since 2008), regenerative agriculture
Soils: mainly loess and clay, some sandy plots
Main varieties: Gruner Veltliner, Neuburger, Pinot Blanc, Muller Thurgau for the whites; Blaufrankisch, Pinot Noir for the reds
Annual production (approx.): 75,000 bottles
Winemaking: manual harvest, sorting table, wild yeast only. Mostly classic although gentle maceration for the reds, the whites get a varying, but usually quite small, degree of short skin contact. No fining, no filter, little to no sulfur.
Fun Facts:
The first vines that the Nestarec family started to work with grew on a tiny plot that was returned to them as restitution in the early 1990s. The winery went professional in 2001.
Milan’s father Milan Nestarec Sr. entrusted him with all the winemaking when Milan was barely 16 years old (which makes Milan quite an experienced young winemaker now at only 33 years of age)
The vineyards and cellar switched to organic and low intervention in late 2008, inspired by Milan’s multiple encounters with natural winemakers at home and abroad
The world discovered Nestarec wines partly thanks to the Mosel biodynamic pioneer Rudolf Trossen who found them interesting and kept sending people to the Nestarec tasting table at a natural wine fair in Cologne. Only later Milan discovered that this is what made him met his first importers
The current focus of the winery is to go to great lengths to care for old vineyards and keep the energy in the bottle
Milan is a real lover of Jura, fire-roasted sausages, and exchanges of ideas. “This is the real reason why I make wine – because it’s an incomparable vehicle to connect with interesting and/or like-minded people and creators. Such a social medium.”
Milan also has a joint project with his wife, Mirka; she oversees the creative direction of MIRA, a winery within their winery, which focuses on single varietal wines from two wild vineyards they acquired in the villages of Velké Bílovice and Moravský Žižkov, Moravia, in 2022.
region: Moravia, Czech Republic
varietal: Pinot Gris, Pinot Noir
style: sparkling (pet nat)
farming/cellar:
pairing: