Milan Nestarec - RUZ Czech Republic MORAVA 1L 2023 (11.5% ABV)

Milan on this wine: “To make our liter-bottle rainbow complete, we found a new pink pal to our beloved Běl, Okr and Nach. The name is once again a simple description of its color, since “růžová” means pink in Czech. I prefer to make a rosé this fresh, “paysan” in the best of senses of the term. Using some of our previously F&K Rosé grapes, this is a prime raw material in humble disguise, definitely high value for money.“

The label is a linocut made by Milan’s wife Mirka, and the claim on the bottle is inspired by Luis Barragán, a famous Mexican architect who loved to use vivid pink in his buildings.

Grapes: Blaufrankisch, Zweigelt.

Vineyards: Loess, clay, sand – blend of different vineyards in Velké Bílovice and Moravský Žižkov, aged from 5 to 21 years. Estate-owned, organic.

Making of:

2023: the grapes are hand-harvested, sorted and left to macerate as whole bunches for 3 days. Slowly pressed the day after, spontaneously fermented then left to mature on lees in stainless steel tank before finishing ageing in wood. After about 6 months, the wine is bottled unfined, unfiltered, with 3 mg/l of sulfur at bottling. 

Personality: juicy, plump, laser-sharp! Although still easy-drinking, this is a rosé of the lovely intense kind that you can enjoy no matter the season, long after you cover your pool. Full of red and dark berries and ready for some food-wine pairing fun – it’s freshness perfectly cuts through fatty meats or charcuterie.

from Milan, winemaker:

 "Moravia, my home, has the perfect conditions for making light-bodied, fun wines with good acidity. This unpretentious "rural realness" used to be the traditional style here, and I’ve been drinking and loving wines like this since I was a kid. Obviously, our region also had to go through the craze of new oak barrels, de-acidifiers, tannins and all the other BS covering the sense of place in our wines, when the Czech Republic opened its borders after 1989. 

To make it really "ours", the label is now a linocut made by my dear wife Mirka, and we found a cute plump bottle whose shape and crown cap transport me right to my childhood when we used to buy beer or juice in such containers. We kept the liter volume, of course, as it's an important part of Moravian wine heritage. Or you can call it “mini-magnum”, like my Montréal friends do." The bottle design is meant to pay homage to a field worker's bottle.

2023 vintage info:

Slightly late spring, high temperatures and sufficient rainfall during the growing season had a favourable effect on the growth and maturing. The crop was very good, but strong perenospora attack during flowering took the yields down 10—15%. At the end of the day though it had a positive effect on the quality of the wines. We started 
the harvest about 14 days earlier than most local winemakers, for lower alcohol and better acidity. It took us a total of 6 weeks as we still harvest everything by hand, 
so one needs to plan carefully in order to get the maturity right in all plots. The fermentations went much better compared to the 2022 vintage, all wines cleared and finished pretty quickly. We processed all the reds as whole bunches, the whites with cca 15% stems. with the trefoil.  After fermentation, quite a bit of acidity fell out in the 
form of tartar. A good vintage overall