An IT guy who goes to the vineyard to clear his head

If you’d met Ondřej Zháněl when he was eighteen and told him he’d one day become a winemaker, he’d probably have tapped his forehead in disbelief. The son of an artistic blacksmith, growing up in Břeclav, he had a field behind his house where, at most, beetroot and potatoes were grown. Wine? That certainly didn’t feature in his plans back then.

Václav Kratochvil works as an operator on the gas storage facility in Uhřice. In addition, he farms a two-hectare vineyard, where he takes care of about ten thousand heads of vines. When he goes to work, he walks - the journey takes him fifteen minutes. Just walk up the hill, walk through his vineyard and there he is. On the way back, he sees what needs to be done. "I really enjoy working on the hopper. But working in the vineyard, that's what fulfills me. I could be here all day and be happy. It clears your head," he says.

This report brings you the first part of the interesting winemakers who work in our group. We start in Čejkovice, where father and son, Jiří and Petr Št'avík, cultivate their lines. Petr works in MND as the head of the mechanical department and Jiří is the manager of the Dambořice storage facility.