South Moravia: Wine, Architecture and the Art of Perseverance
- 6 days ago
- 14 min read
Updated: 5 days ago
A journey through a region where landscape, craft, hospitality and contemporary design grow from the same ground.
South Moravia is a region where contemporary culture rarely begins with a blank page. It grows through continuation: old cellars are returned to use, industrial buildings become places of gathering, wineries extend the landscape, and architecture connects wine to art, food, hospitality and regional memory.
The first view of Znojmo arrives from above.
The train crosses the Dyje valley before entering the town, briefly revealing a composition of wooded slopes, water, bridges, church towers and densely layered roofs. It is a remarkably cinematic introduction to a place whose most important spaces are often hidden from view. Beneath the streets lies a second city: an extensive network of medieval cellars, passageways and tunnels cut into the rock below the historic centre. Some were used for storage, others for defence, food and wine. Today, they provide more than historical atmosphere. In places, they have returned to active use.
That becomes tangible at Vinařský dům Znojmo, where Vlastimil Nešetřil has brought wine production back into a Renaissance merchant’s house on the main square. The building descends through several layers of cellars into the Znojmo underground, while above them sit a wine bar, courtyard, terrace and guest apartments.
My train had arrived far later than planned, and a tasting group was already waiting. Nešetřil shortened their pause and led us underground anyway. He moved between stainless-steel tanks, wooden barrels, concrete vessels and qvevri with the energy of someone who still finds the whole experiment slightly improbable. He commutes between Prague and Znojmo, but the winery is clearly more than a side project. It is the kind of undertaking that grows by occupying every available corner and refusing to separate product, place and hospitality.
The historic underground is also part of the winery’s practical logic. Water from its deepest level, held at a stable temperature, is used to cool fermenting must. Wine is not simply displayed in a picturesque cellar; production has returned to the conditions that made the cellar useful in the first place.
This is an important distinction in South Moravia. History is rarely preserved as scenery alone. It is more often brought back into use.
Znojmo | Vinařský dům Znojmo by Vlastimil Nešetřil
The city above, the wine below
A short walk away, the Enotéka znojemských vín occupies part of a former brewery complex overlooking the Dyje valley. CHYBIK + KRISTOF treated its two existing structures in deliberately different ways: the nineteenth-century brewery was preserved, while a utilitarian technical hall from the 1970s was opened up and radically reimagined from within.
Asymmetrical windows frame fragments of the city — a church tower, the river valley, the roofs beyond — while the interior is organised as a sequence of smaller volumes that recalls the compressed scale of traditional wine cellars. The tasting system is accessible and almost democratic: visitors choose from a wide regional selection and pour their own glasses.
It offers an early hint that South Moravian wine culture is no longer confined to private cellars or specialist circles. Architecture has become one way of opening it to a wider public.
Elsewhere in Znojmo, Stará Pekárna continues the same idea on a quieter scale. The house has accumulated Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque and later layers over centuries, including traces of its long baking history. Its appeal lies not in the restoration of one supposedly pure period, but in the coexistence of many lives. Rooms, objects and old masonry are allowed to sit beside contemporary interventions without being forced into a seamless image.
This sensitivity to what already exists appears repeatedly across the region. In Znojmo, it is closely associated with ORA — Original Regional Architecture — the locally rooted studio that worked with Nešetřil over several stages and later became involved in Kolby, Reisten, Štajnhaus and Kocanda Kravsko.
ORA’s work is rarely spectacular in isolation. Its strength lies in noticing what a place can already do.
At Vinařský dům, the architects did not attempt to turn a historic house into a polished design object. They cleared, connected and adapted. Old and new remain distinguishable, but they belong to one living structure. Atmosphere emerges less through luxury than through proportion, texture, patina and the confidence to leave certain things alone.
That approach would become one of the most persistent threads of the journey.
Enotéka znojemských vín by CHYBIK + KRISTOF | Stará Pekárna by ORA, photos by BoysPlayNice
A family place still becoming
At Kocanda Kravsko, continuation is not an abstract architectural principle. It is visible in the people carrying chairs across a courtyard, arranging flowers or preparing a room for the next gathering.
The complex began as an inn on the route between Vienna and Prague. In the nineteenth century, it developed into a ceramics factory, with production halls, workshops, warehouses and a prominent chimney. After nationalisation, changing ownership and long decline, it eventually returned to local hands.
Today, Jan Hora is both architect and host. He develops and runs Kocanda with his family, while ORA — the practice he co-founded with Barbora Hora and Jan Veisser — guides its architectural transformation.
When we visited, preparations for an afternoon wedding were already underway. Hora’s son was playing with his grandfather, who is a winemaker — no surprise there. His mother was arranging flowers. Tables were being moved, doors opened, courtyards crossed. There was a sense of calm activity everywhere, but little of the anxious polish associated with formal event venues.
Kocanda hosts many weddings, yet it is gradually becoming more open to day visitors and the surrounding community through its restaurant and events. That makes the project less a private hospitality enclave than a contemporary continuation of its original role as an inn: a place on a route, shaped by arrival, food and gathering.
The architecture preserves this sense of ongoing use. Old plaster moulds from the ceramics factory remain on site, reappearing as tables, lampshades or objects. Abandoned mixers stay in the former production spaces. Uneven walls, patched plaster, old timber and industrial frames are not cleaned into anonymity.
New elements are precise, but they do not try to erase the building’s previous lives.
The project is still growing, phase by phase, building by building. That incompleteness feels essential. Kocanda does not present itself as a finished interpretation of history. It remains an active family place, adapting as its next use becomes clear.
Kocanda Kravsko by ORA
Architecture from the vineyard rows
If ORA’s work often begins with what has been left behind, the Lahofer Winery near Znojmo begins with the order of the vines.
Designed by CHYBIK + KRISTOF, its concrete ribs follow the spacing of the vineyard rows, carrying that rhythm through the tasting room and production spaces. Above them, the roof rises into a walkable amphitheatre used for concerts, screenings and harvest celebrations.
The building is large and unapologetically contemporary, yet its most convincing gesture is public rather than iconic. It turns the roof of a winery into a place where local life and wine tourism can overlap.
Inside, Patrik Hábl’s painting transforms the underside of the vaulted structure. Deep reds, ochres, blacks, greys and earth tones stretch across the ceiling like a geological section. The work refers to the varied soils of the Znojmo region, but also to its archaeological and historical layers. It is not art added to soften an architectural interior. It completes the building’s central idea: vineyard rows above ground, root systems below, soil translated into colour.
The WAVE Welschriesling Hardenberg 2024 seemed a particularly fitting wine to taste there — not because it explained the building, but because both belonged to the same experiment. The series works with vessels and methods beyond conventional stainless steel, while the architecture itself turns production, art and public life into one visible structure.
Lahofer is a winery designed to receive many people. Its openness is deliberate.
The same cannot quite be said of Gurdau.
LAHOFER by CHYBIK + KRISTOF
A hill between hills
From a distance, Gurdau Winery almost disappears.
Aleš Fiala’s building rises from the vineyards of Kurdějov as a low concrete curve, covered by a planted roof through which trees and shrubs emerge. The production spaces sit below ground; the tasting areas, terraces and two guest apartments open towards the surrounding hills.
The building was the most atmospheric place of the journey.
Sommelier Marian Němec led me onto the roof and pointed out the vineyards, the village church and the larger landscape beyond. From there, architecture no longer felt like an object in the vines. It became a viewing ground: somewhere between a terrace, a garden and an artificial hill.
Gurdau’s calm is supported by an exacting approach to cultivation. The estate invests heavily in labour-intensive methods intended to encourage vines to form deeper root systems. The process is costly and demanding, but the aim is greater resilience and a more direct relationship with the soil. The severity continues in the cellar. If a vintage does not meet the required standard, it is not bottled simply for the sake of continuity.
This commitment is impressive. It also creates distance.
Gurdau feels carefully protected: visually open to the landscape, but socially more guarded than Lahofer. The experience is precise, controlled and undeniably privileged. While Lahofer turns the winery into a public stage, Gurdau protects its world more closely.
That contrast is useful. It shows that architecture’s relationship to landscape does not automatically determine its relationship to people.
Both wineries invest deeply in place, wine and design. One interprets openness as public culture; the other as concentrated exclusivity. Gurdau is still evolving, with ambitious plans for further expansion. The question will be how much growth this remarkable balance between landscape, silence and control can absorb.
GURDAU by Aleš Fiala
Wine without the need for titles
At THAYA in Havraníky, the tone is different again.
The winery sits close to the Podyjí National Park and combines production, tasting spaces, restaurant, hotel and roof terrace around an older agricultural structure. Jakub Cigler’s architecture uses broad timber roofs and traditional tiles to evoke both the movement of the river and the profile of the surrounding hills.
Yet the most memorable part of the visit was not the scale of the complex, but the manner of Jakub Smrčka, who guided me through it.
Smrčka has received prominent industry titles, but he showed little interest in talking about them. His attention returned repeatedly to wine: its acidity, its development, the decisions made in the cellar and the character of individual sites. The tour was calm, detailed and free of performance.
Around the buildings, wildflower meadows and more natural transitions into the surrounding landscape soften what could otherwise have become a self-contained resort. These areas were developed in close collaboration with his wife, connecting the winery to a broader understanding of biodiversity and place.
In a region where wine architecture is becoming increasingly visible, THAYA suggests that the strongest personalities do not always need to occupy the foreground.
THAYA by Jakub Cigler
A small town thinking at a larger scale
South Moravia would be less interesting if wine were its only cultural language.
In Mikulov, contemporary art and collectible design have developed with an ambition that seems disproportionate to the town’s size. The Galerie Závodný is one of the clearest examples.
Founded by Vladimíra Brucháčková Závodná after years of private collecting, the gallery focuses on geometric, minimalist and conceptual art, including Czech and Central European positions that are often underrepresented elsewhere. Its architecture is rigorous and quiet, built from pale stone and carefully inserted into the historic fabric of the former Jewish quarter.
Závodná speaks about art without any suggestion that Mikulov might be too small for serious cultural work. That conviction is perhaps what makes the gallery feel so natural there. It does not operate as a decorative cultural attraction for wine tourists. It belongs to a larger belief that peripheral places can produce, collect and discuss work at the highest level.
The annual Křehký Mikulov festival expands that belief across the town.
Each year, the castle, gardens, galleries and temporary venues become a network for collectible design, art, talks and workshops. Glass, ceramics and porcelain play a particularly important role, linking established makers with students and emerging studios. The programme brings collectors and design professionals together with families, visitors and local audiences, making contemporary design unusually public without reducing its complexity.
This is one reason Mikulov feels culturally denser than its scale suggests. Wine may bring people into the region, but it is increasingly joined by art, architecture, glass and objects as equal ways of reading the place.
Mikulov & Galerie Závodný by Štěpán Děnge
Another kind of pairing
The regional food culture is also beginning to move beyond predictable combinations of local dishes and wine.
At Víno Radosti, the surprise was a tea pairing.
In the middle of one of the Czech Republic’s most prominent wine regions, tea was treated not as an alcohol-free substitute, but as an equally considered companion to the menu. Temperatures, tannins, infusions and aromas were adjusted to each course with the same precision normally reserved for wine.
The gesture was small, but revealing. It suggested a hospitality culture confident enough in its wine identity not to make wine compulsory.
Víno Radosti combines restaurant, cellar and accommodation in the centre of Mikulov, yet it avoids the feeling of a packaged wine experience. The tea pairing, in particular, showed how a regional tradition can become more interesting when it is not defended too rigidly.
The deepest layer
A few kilometres away, the Archeopark Pavlov shifts the timeline of the journey dramatically.
Wine cellars may reach back centuries, but the settlement history beneath Pálava extends tens of thousands of years. The museum stands at one of the most important Upper Palaeolithic sites in Europe, associated with the mammoth hunters of the Gravettian period.
Architect Radko Květ showed me through the building and spoke about the difficulties of constructing directly beside — and in relation to — archaeological layers that could not simply be disturbed or translated into a conventional museum.
Most of the building lies underground. White concrete forms rise above the planted roof like abstracted limestone outcrops, marking rather than dominating the landscape. Inside, concrete, oak, glass and controlled darkness shape a sequence in which original finds, reconstruction and architecture are held in careful tension.
The challenge was not simply to create exhibition space. It was to build where the ground itself was the primary artefact.
Seen within the larger journey, the Archeopark expands the idea of terroir beyond wine. Soil here does not only determine flavour. It contains tools, bones, ceramics, human traces and evidence of repeated settlement. The cultivated landscape of contemporary vineyards rests on top of much older forms of habitation.
Archeopark Pavlov by Radko Květ
Views as material
Back in the present, ORA’s projects at Kolby and Reisten offer two compact lessons in how architecture can frame wine without overwhelming it.
At Kolby, the task was to bring coherence to a fragmented winery complex comprising historic cellars, a more recent extension and new operational requirements. ORA wrapped parts of the ensemble in locally sourced acacia slats, creating shade, trellises, seating and a visual connection between previously unrelated volumes.
The most memorable space, however, remains underground. The old vaulted cellar gives weight and continuity to the newer tasting areas above. Talking with the winemaker among barrels and brickwork, the architecture felt less like an imposed identity than a structure supporting a longer story of production.
At Reisten, the transformation is more explicitly about looking.
Large openings cut through the existing winery create opposing views: nearby vines on one side, the Nové Mlýny reservoir and Děvín on the other. Inside, exposed concrete, steel and oak are restrained. Outside, the broad timber terrace becomes the real centre of the project.
The host spoke about the wines, but the landscape remained constantly present behind him. One did not sit beside the vineyard as a picturesque backdrop. The terrace seemed to extend the tasting directly into it.
Kolby by ORA | Reisten by ORA
Houses that remember
The journey ends in Hrušky, with a house and mill whose history was interrupted by the political upheavals of the twentieth century.
A local milling family began building a new house and mechanised mill around the end of the Second World War. After the Communist takeover, the family lost the property. Members were imprisoned, sent to labour camps or forced into emigration, and the buildings were left incomplete or converted to other uses.
Decades later, the descendants returned to continue what had been broken off.
At Villa Hrušky, architect Petr Pelčák and his collaborators did not attempt to recreate an idealised rural past. Instead, they completed and transformed the existing structures in a way that makes it difficult to tell where one generation’s work ends and another begins.
Michaela Krupičková welcomed me with the ease of someone opening a family home rather than presenting a design hotel. She showed me the apartments, the garden and the neighbouring mill, explaining the architecture and the family history without making either feel solemn.
The next morning, breakfast was served around one large, carefully laid table — or, when the weather allowed, in the garden. It felt closer to visiting relatives than checking out of a boutique property: generous, unhurried and entirely without performance.
Next door, Mlýn Hrušky has become a bistro, wine space, cultural venue and meeting place for both visitors and the local community. Its original volume remains legible, while new interventions allow it to host tastings, dinners, exhibitions and gatherings.
The mill also contains a showroom dedicated to Czech glass.
That detail opens another thread entirely. In South Moravia, wine leads towards architecture; architecture leads towards family history; the mill leads towards glass. Each subject seems to reveal another network of makers, materials and places.
Villa Hrušky & Mlýn Hrušky by Petr Pelčák
The limits of continuation
Not every new development in the region follows this logic with the same conviction.
ARTEVINI points towards a more conventional, investor-led future: larger in scale, more programmatic and closer to the international resort model. Its combination of winery, rooms, gastronomy and wellness reflects a clear shift in how capital sees the region. That development deserves attention, even if neither its architecture nor its concept felt as persuasive as the more deeply rooted places encountered elsewhere.
Growth is inevitable. South Moravia’s increasing visibility will bring larger projects, more tourism and new forms of investment. The crucial question is whether they will strengthen the region’s cultural fabric or merely borrow its imagery.
The projects that work best here do not succeed because they look regional.
They succeed because they continue something specific.
A family history.
A cellar.
A factory.
A vineyard.
A craft.
A relationship with a village, town or piece of land.
The wine itself has undergone a similar process. The region’s long viticultural tradition was damaged by phylloxera, war, displacement, collectivisation and decades in which quantity was often valued above distinction. After 1989, restitution, private ownership, travel, education and renewed attention to origin created the conditions for a different culture of wine.
Natural wine, qvevri, organic cultivation and more experimental cellar practices now form a visible part of that culture. So does a renewed interest in sparkling wine, driven in part by the region’s ability to retain freshness and acidity in selected sites. But the most meaningful change is not any one technique.
It is the return of individual responsibility.
Winemakers, architects, hosts, artists and families are once again able to make long-term decisions about particular places — and to live with the consequences.
Perhaps that is why South Moravia feels so coherent despite the differences between its projects.
It is not united by one aesthetic.
Lahofer is public and expansive.
Gurdau is guarded and precise.
Kocanda remains familial and unfinished.
Nešetřil disappears into the city’s underground.
The Archeopark reaches much further back in time.
Villa Hrušky makes continuity feel as ordinary as breakfast around a shared table.
What connects them is not a desire to start again.
It is the decision to keep going.
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Further Threads
Begin in Znojmo
A broad introduction to the wines of the Znojmo subregion inside a former brewery complex transformed by CHYBIK + KRISTOF.
An eight-century-old house where accommodation, illustration, photography, objects and historic fabric coexist without becoming a period set.
An urban winery, wine bar and guesthouse whose production descends through the historic underground beneath Znojmo.
Follow ORA
A former roadside inn and ceramics factory evolving into a family-run place for staying, eating and gathering.
An existing winery made coherent through acacia screens, landscape and a new social centre organised around wine.
A Renaissance house in Mikulov treated as a process of discovery rather than a conventional renovation.
A restrained tasting room and generous terrace that turn views of the vineyard, Děvín and Nové Mlýny into the main architectural experience.
Enter the Landscape
A winery, amphitheatre and artwork whose concrete structure grows from the rhythm of the vine rows.
A planted concrete hill offering one of the region’s most complete — and most controlled — encounters between wine, architecture and landscape.
A contemporary wine and hospitality complex near the Podyjí National Park, shaped around production, landscape and a quietly serious approach to winemaking.
Stay for the Culture
A privately founded gallery in Mikulov dedicated to geometric, minimal and conceptual art.
An annual festival bringing collectible design, glass, ceramics, porcelain and contemporary makers into the castle and the town.
An underground museum that brings architecture into direct contact with one of Europe’s most important Palaeolithic landscapes.
Continue South
A family house continued across generations and transformed into an intimate place to stay.
A restored mill combining food, wine, culture, local gathering and a showroom for Czech glass manufacture KVETNA 1794.
A restaurant, cellar and small hotel in Mikulov where tea pairing offers an unexpected counterpoint to the region’s wine culture. Of course, you can also enjoy amazing wine here.
Still Emerging
A larger, investor-led winery and resort development signalling the direction in which parts of South Moravian wine tourism may be moving.
