Martin Vajčner

The Vajčner family name has been documented in connection with winemaking and barrel making since 1636. Martin (born 1986) studied winemaking in Valtice, Czechia, completed a master's degree in England, and worked for 11 years at the Czech agricultural inspection and testing institute, checking other people's wines, before founding his own winery at the end of 2018. He farms about 8 hectares of small plots in Znojmo under organic certification, with a cellar in Hodonice. The white wines are made by direct press, the reds by carbonic maceration, and everything is made with spontaneous fermentation, long aging on the gross lees and natural malolactic fermentation, unfiltered and without stabilization. In the cellar stand four giant clay vessels (qvevri) made in 2016 by the potter Petr Tomes from clay from nearby Šatov, 220–250 liters each, alongside ceramic amphorae from Poštorná. Since 2022 the winery has been a member of the Autentisté association. Aaron Ayscough, one of the influential voices in the natural wine world, writes of him as an astonishingly talented Moravian winemaker. He reports that zero-zero connoisseurs in France snap to attention and take a fresh look at the glass as they taste his luminous Grüners.