About us

Family – the true roots of wine

Each Krásná Hora bottle stems strongly from the shared efforts of our family and friends

Ondřej Dubas

Anička’s father, Šárka’s husband, Marek Sr.’s nephew and a Swiss army knife of a worker whose business card reads “CST”, aka cellar-sales-tractor

Blanka Vybíralová

Viktorie’s mother, Marek Sr.’s wife, bread baker and an awesome chef; also a tractorwoman during the vintage

Marek Vybíral Sr.

Viktorie and Marek Jr.’s father, Blanka’s husband, Helenka’s son, Ondra’s uncle. Aka “The one who’s to blame for everything, including delaying everything and everyone

Grandpa Slávek

Blanka’s father, Marek Sr.’s father-in-law and Viktorie’s grandpa, full-time retiree and best friend to kids everywhere

Luke

Our friend and champion in the field of “finding and/or repairing anything anywhere in the winery”.

Franta

The most reliable rock music fan, permanently afflicted with a good mood, diabetes and a passion for Lancia cars.

Grandma Helenka

Marek Sr.’s mother, Blanka’s mother-in-law, grandma of Ondra, Viktorie and Marek Jr. Also Anna's great-grandmother, organizer of the senior-volunteers team and Marek Sr.'s most fervent critic.

Marek Vybíral Jr.

Adam and David’s father, Kamila’s husband, Marek Sr.’s son, Helenka’s grandson, Ondra’s cousin, manager of the e-shop and shipping.

Mikuláš Šťastný

Breeder of rebellious dogs, artist in hiding, viticulturist with a less-than-friendly attitude towards machinery, especially the tractors.

Biodynamics

Connected with the soil, gazing up towards the stars

We listen to our vineyards like we listen to our kids and partners; in both cases, approaching them with respect and a lot of attention allows you to understand what makes them thrive.

Connection with the Earth

At the very beginning of my winegrowing career, I read Nicolas Joly’s book Wine From Sky to Earth. I didn’t really understand how somebody in France could have destroyed the vineyards so much that they needed an absolute change of farming. A disaster like this has never really happened in our village. Our grandfather never used herbicides, and synthetic fertilizers were a rare sight – they were expensive, and we had enough natural fertilizer from our own pigs and chickens. Distributing heaps of this stinky, heavy manure over our vineyards year after year wasn’t the most exciting of tasks, but it had to be done – we had tons of it anyways. This was my childhood, my “normal way” of doing things. My connection with the Earth is thus a natural one; as for the connection with the Universe, I’m still working on that.

It’s not about applying a method.
It’s an attitude towards life in general

In spring 2014, we already felt quite comfortable with organics, but couldn’t quite get a hold of biodynamics. We thought: Since we don’t understand its theory, let’s try it in practice, and we started. Already during the first season, the main pieces of the puzzle all fell into place – it was a no-brainer. Since then, we’ve been trying to follow this path as honestly as we can. It’s not about applying a method. It’s an attitude towards life in general, towards nature as a whole.

Our wine

History

Our lives and our vineyards are deeply intertwined

From the post-WW2 baby steps and a severed toe to the modern-day winery, Krásná Hora keeps moving on, sometimes in spite of itself. As Marek Sr. says, „In winemaking, you’re never done, there’s always something to fix… One would like to be an artist but ends up often more like a repairman.“

1945

Grandpa František arrives in the Moravian village of Bulhary and the last non-expelled German villager teaches him to make red wine

1958

The grandparents return to their native Ratíškovice and start a tiny vineyard next to their future house, and a small cellar underneath it

2001

As his father loses his big toe, Marek Sr., rather against his will, takes over the cellar and vineyard from his grandfather

2004

Our brand new stainless steel tanks, the very first in Ratíškovice, make waves: our fellow villagers suspect that we’re switching to dairy production.

2007

We discover the beauty of the vineyard site called Krásná Hora (literally “beautiful vineyard / hill”) and buy one hectare of apricot orchard that we turn into our Chardonnay vineyard a year later

2009

As a gift for her first birthday, our daughter Viktorie gets a wine namesake – our best white cuvée – and we add 3 hectares of newly planted, certified organic vineyards on the Krásná Hora slope to her dowry.

2010

The first grapes enter our brand new winery. Virtually the same moment the construction workers leave. Phew.

2011

The first Lamborghini in the family is, sadly, a tractor. Ondra and Mikuláš, our young guns, definitively drop out of enology studies and start to take real-life winemaking lessons from local legend Aleš Gala instead

2014

We still can’t figure out how biodynamics works, so we simply jump in

2015

We visit Milan Nestarec and start to think there’s something about natural wines. Our first Barrel Selection wines are born

2016

Our wines are sold in Copenhagen! Wow

2018

La Blanca is born – Our first gemischter satz on skins

2019

Blanca is joined by Ruby and Herr Gewürtz, and Jaromír 99, a famous Czech artist and musician, draws their faces

2020

Covid interrupts our world tour, allowing us to fully focus on our vineyards again. So, together with friends, we buy a 7-hectare plot, our biggest to date, at a place called Babušák

2020

New brand design, new labels, new life!

Vineyards and Winery