The vine grows back after the frosts. If born, it will be a rare vintage

At the Hrabkovský winery in Litoměřice, the frost destroyed up to ninety percent of the vineyards. Now the vine seems to be recovering. “It turned out that roughly twenty percent of the vineyards eventually survived the frost,” owner Pavel Hrabkovský told Novinkám a Práv.

He did not want to predict further developments. “Even a bush that has frozen ninety or one hundred percent will push out some greens. If he also plants grapes, that will be seen in three Sundays or in a month,” he noted.

If there are grapes and it is possible to produce wine from them, it could be all the more rare due to the small amount.

“It was a shock for the plants, but they didn’t die and are growing again. This year’s harvest could be even better, and this vintage could be very special, especially here in Bohemia, where almost everything froze,” confirmed winemaker Lukáš Rudolfský from Kutná Hora. “In two or three weeks, we’ll see how many flowers they put on,” Rudolfský added.

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But many are skeptical. One of the co-owners of Vinařství Chrámce na Mostecko, Kateřina Kreisinger, expects an almost zero harvest. “The vines will turn after a few weeks, but the grapes won’t, or they won’t ripen enough. So there will be a minimum of this year’s harvest,” said Kreisinger.

She specified that ninety-five percent of the vineyards were frozen. “It’s very bad, the damage is huge,” she stated. She would like to obtain compensation from the state, but is cautious. “We have no idea if there will be any. It’s better not to get your hopes up,” the winemaker pointed out.

Even the Kutnohorsk grower does not rely on compensation. “In the end, the winemakers probably won’t get anything. It would just be an uneconomical administration for someone to go around counting how much has frozen when something is still growing. Every year in December, a declaration is made about the harvest, then it will be clear, now it is difficult to evaluate,” said Rudolfský.

According to him, frost protection is not worth it, it would be too expensive. “It would cost us 1.5 million crowns,” he added.

The effects of the vagaries of the weather are also reflected in the discussion about the introduction of an excise tax on still wine. Winemakers are against it, according to them it would put local producers at a disadvantage against foreign competition.

Rudolfský does not count on compensation from the state, nor does he want to pay him anything in return. “It would again be a bureaucratic burden and the collected money will be dispersed among the officials. I understand that the state needs money, but when it flows into a juggernaut that sucks us all, nobody wants to pay the tax. Let them fire half the officials,” objected the grower from Kutnohora.

Although he himself would prefer to see the industry without unnecessary regulations, controls and bureaucracy, he is sympathetic to farmers’ demands for weather compensation, which may be frowned upon by some of the public.

“All farmers want some compensation. The harvest is always dependent on the weather. When things don’t go well here, potatoes are brought in from Egypt. It’s just that the grower has to take care of the field and pay the people, even if he doesn’t harvest, so that he has a chance to harvest next year,” said Rudolfský

“When we started, one external accountant was enough for us. Now we still grow the same, but we have to have three people for administration,” he noted. “Although we are a wine dwarf, winemaking has a huge tradition in Bohemia, it would be a shame to lose it,” he added.

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