Petr Kočařík is an independent natural winemaker based in Čejkovice, South Moravia (Czech Republic), where he cultivates a small family estate of approximately two hectares of vineyards. His philosophy is rooted in respect for nature and traditional winemaking practices, focusing on authenticity and transparency in every bottle.

The vineyards are farmed organically, with careful attention to biodiversity and soil health. In the cellar, Kočařík follows a low-intervention approach: fermentations occur spontaneously with native yeasts, wines are typically aged on their lees to develop texture and complexity, and the use of additives is kept to an absolute minimum. Most wines are bottled without filtration or fining, preserving their natural structure and expression.

Kočařík's focus is Pinot Noir — a Burgundian variety, not a native Moravian grape, but one that found its place in Čejkovice thanks to the region's calcareous loess soils, which hold the kind of tension and acidity Pinot needs to be great. Kočařík saw this potential early, and built his reputation around it. Alongside Pinot Noir, he works with Hibernal — a frost-resistant local hybrid that most winemakers dismiss, until they taste his version. His wines are known for their freshness, balance, and clear sense of place, combining vibrant acidity with subtle texture and mineral character.

Today, Petr Kočařík's wines are appreciated by sommeliers and natural wine enthusiasts for their purity, drinkability, and honest reflection of South Moravian terroir.

Before natural wine had a name in Moravia, Richard Stávek was already doing it. He started farming his vines in the mid-1990s — before the scene existed, before the terminology arrived, before anyone was paying attention to this corner of Central Europe. He came to wine not through inheritance but through curiosity: his background was in food and wine journalism, which meant he understood exactly what was missing from the bottles around him.

Today he farms 15 hectares near Němčičky in southern Moravia — but less than a third of that is vines. The rest is an ecosystem: goats he makes cheese from, bees whose honey goes into Medový Muškátek, apricot and cherry orchards, seasonal vegetables. He even dries oak staves that find their way into barrels made by Stockinger, one of Austria's most respected cooperages. The same oak ends up in his wines: old barrels, slow aging, texture without weight.

His 4.5 hectares of vines average 50 years in age, planted in the sandy, limestone-rich soils of southern Moravia. Most of his wines are field blends — multiple varieties grown and harvested together from the same plot, fermented as one. Riesling, Grüner Veltliner, Blaufrankisch, St. Laurent, local Moravian varieties, all growing side by side the way they always did before anyone decided monoculture was efficient.

Nothing added. Nothing forced. No sulphur, no fining, no filtration. Whole bunches, foot-stomped, fermented with indigenous yeast in open wooden tanks. His wines are patient because he is patient. Worth every year of the wait.

Eva and Ivo Laurin left Prague for the countryside in 2013 — first came bees and carp, then, in 2015, an uncommercialised first vintage of cider. By 2016 they were selling it. Ivo trained at Peter Mitchell's Cider Academy in the UK to learn the conventional fundamentals — and then quietly rejected most of them.

Home is Sudkův Důl, a fortified farmstead dating to 1490, in the Josafat Valley near Tábor. A short walk through the woods live their friends Jan and Nada Klimeš, who fled Prague around the same time to make birch sap under the name EUFORIA — two families on the frontier of Czech neo-paysan drinks.

UTOPIA starts as cider: apples from old Czech varieties, wild seedlings found in their own valley, and English cider apples, pressed and left to ferment spontaneously with local wild yeasts and bacteria in 225-litre neutral oak barrels for 12 months. No added sulphites, no fining, no filtration, no artificial carbonation.

The vinegars go a step further. After the cider is fully formed, it moves into dedicated vinegar oak barrels for another 10–12 months, fermenting by the original, slow Orleans method — the same technique used for centuries before industrial vinegar shortened the process to a matter of days. What comes out the other end is something closer to a fine, sippable ferment than the sharp stuff in a kitchen cupboard: aromatic, layered, and gentle enough to drink on its own. Some bottles are then macerated with raspberries, sour cherries, elderflower, or plums smoked over plum wood — building further layers of flavour in small, limited batches.

Nothing is pasteurised. Nothing is sulphured. The vinegars are only coarsely filtered, so a living veil of vinegar mother is a normal, expected part of the bottle — proof of how little has been done to it. Michelin-listed restaurants in Prague and London already pour UTOPIA. It's vinegar treated with the same patience most people reserve for wine.