Reisten, wine from Templar cellars - Horydoly.cz - Outdoor Generation

Reisten, wine from Templar cellars - Horydoly.cz - Outdoor Generation

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Reisten is currently part of the Templářské sklepy Čejkovice cooperative, one of the largest wine complexes in the Czech Republic. However, the wines produced in Pavlova are still sold under the Reisten brand.

We had an interview about the interesting winery with sales and marketing director Bohdan Špička and sommelier Jakub Šumšala, a native of Čejkovice and a private winemaker who works with Templarské sklepy.

Why did you choose the name Reisten?

Tip: Reisten was founded in 1999 by three partners who built it from the beginning as a showcase of Moravian winemaking. They wanted to produce world-class wines and were also interested in exporting them. As is often the case, people come together, but they also part. They were building a new, modern factory behind the village, which caused disagreements between them. Like many others, they started building with us, but they had a bad financial plan. Selling was the only way to get out of a difficult situation with honor.

Družstvo Templarská sklepy Čejkovice then bought the operation under construction and completed the construction. The winery kept the original name Reisten. With an exhibition of five million bottles, Čejkovičtí belongs to the top five largest Czech winemakers. Therefore, they do not interfere with the operation of the Reisten winery, which produces only 120,000 bottles. It has become a small, luxurious winery at the most exclusive wine and vineyard address. It has joint marketing and advertising with Templar cellars. But otherwise the lords of Reisten are almost an absolute autonomous unit.

Šamšula: The name comes from the garbled name of a building called Rajstna in the Lednice-Valtice area. It stands on a hill called Reisna near the Valtice - Schrattenberg border crossing on the Austrian-Moravian border and has the shape of a triumphal arch. The original company even had it on the labels of its wines, as it planned cross-border trade with Austrian customers.

Reisten currently manages 30 hectares of vineyards. They start a short distance behind the operational building of our winery. Ours is called the vineyard U Božích muk. In general, our vineyards are half grassed and the other half consists of black fallow. We'll change that next year. Because when there is mud, green work and harvesting are much easier thanks to grass.

We practice standard central vine guidance. At the U Božích muk vineyard, however, we prune the vines using the one-shoot, one-shoot system, i.e. one-year-old mature shoots. In practice, this means an average yield of 1.5 to 2 kg. However, the low yield guarantees us high quality grapes and, consequently, wine. We stress the bushes much less so that the variety of individual cultivars stands out. If you imagine that you have about 60% of a kilogram of grapes that goes to wine, you can imagine how many grapes we have to collect. We harvest by hand.

How do you process grapes?

Samšula: As soon as we bring the grapes into operation, gentle processing begins. We own a unique separator in which only individual healthy and undamaged berries are actually separated after de-seeding. Those that are rotten, dry or otherwise damaged fall into another container.

Our operation is classically equipped with a pneumatic press, which is standard in most wineries today. We also macerate the grapes in favorable years. We deseed the white grapes, separate them, grind them and let them lie on their skins for one or two days. The wines are then more intense in terms of color and taste. We then press the crushed berries, let the must settle so that the coarse particles settle to the bottom, and pour into the fermentation tank.

Of course, we also have stainless steel containers for the production of red wine, which, however, requires a different production technology. In this case, we fill the cisterns directly with mash from crushed blue grapes. During fermentation and thanks to the resulting alcohol, a dye is released from the skins. Subsequently, we pump the contents into a press and we get red wine from the cider that has been treated in this way.

Reisten, wine from Templar cellars - Horydoly .cz - Outdoor Generation

The tanks we have here are duplicators. So they have double walls and thanks to that we can heat or cool the must. This is important when macerating white grapes, which must not ferment at this time. We therefore have to refrigerate the must. In the production of red wines, on the other hand, the mash must be heated. Red wines normally ferment for a little over a week, and special red wines remain in the fermentation tank for up to a month. At Reisten, we mainly focus on white wines. We only produce about ten percent of the red ones here.

Top tip: The Reisten winery also offers sparkling wines, fermented by the French method in bottles. In this regard, we prefer to cooperate with specialized companies to whom we supply our wine. Sparkling lines are used to produce sparkling wines, which are very expensive machines that remove temporary corks and settled sediment in the necks of bottles. For us, buying such a machine when producing ten thousand bottles of sparkling wine is economic nonsense. In addition, there are two companies in Moravia that have this technology. We have no problem cooperating with them. We only supply them with the initial raw material, i.e. wine, and after a while we take away the finished sparkling wine. Some Austrian companies routinely offer the same service. We cooperate with the company Petrák z Kobylí and we are very satisfied with their work. So do our customers.

Cork or screw cap?

Top: Reisten Winery offers customers four lines of wine. They are Kabinetts, which were promoted by the local cellar master Zdeněk Musil, and which are fresh, easy to drink and suitable as everyday wines. The wines have screw caps. Others are Classic, which already represent a higher class. They are dry, playful and light with a sugar content of up to 10g/l and an alcohol content of up to 13%. They are corked. The higher class is represented by the series of appellative wines Maidenburg and Materle. We produce the last series only from the U Božích muk vineyard. By the way, the name Materle is just a translation of this name in the Upper Austrian dialect.

Screw or cork? This is still a very controversial question in Europe. We use both. Cork is perhaps the most suitable and centuries-proven closure, but it also has disadvantages. For example, when you open a bottle, you rarely put the cork back by hand, and it is also a problem to store the wine in a horizontal position. Also, sometimes the wine gets an aftertaste from a poor quality cork. Screw caps eliminate all of this. At Reisten, we started experimenting with modern screw caps earlier and finally started to use them in the Kabinett range. At the beginning, the clients had reservations about them, but they quickly got used to them.

Originally in Europe, winemakers started using screws for cheaper wines, but subsequently discovered the advantages of this closure. If you don't finish the bottle, you can close it and store it lying down for another use without the wine oxidizing. Today, even renowned wine companies reach for them. For example, in Austria, Australia or New Zealand, screw caps clearly lead the way. It even turned out that the screw cap is also suitable for archival wines.

TRIP to Dolní Věstony and Pavlov

In our case, it was also a question of the supply of Czech glassworks. At the beginning of this story, the price of a bottle prepared for a screw cap was significantly more expensive than a classic bottle. Currently, the prices of both types are being compared. It depends on each winemaker what he chooses. Even corks have their specifics. They are usually made in such a way that where there is contact with the wine, there is a surface made of high-quality cork. The center consists of lower quality cork or pressed cork crumb. We also have full cork stoppers. This type of so-called whole cork is significantly more expensive. There are still plastic plugs made of so-called artificial cork, which I consider a dead end. After the initial enthusiasm, they are abandoned because occasionally, especially after insensitive transport, they shoot out of the throat and the contents of the bottle spill out. The same applies to glass stoppers. Little is known that you have to carefully snap these fasteners. However, this requires expensive technology, and in addition, this closure itself is the most expensive.

We did not see any sitting room in the winery. Where do you have tastings?

Top tip: The Reisten winery has a tasting room in a renovated building outside of production. We can find it right in the village of Pavlov. For now, we call it the Barn at work and it is, at least in my opinion, a very pleasant space for organizing tastings or other events. Here, since May, we have been meeting fans of our products, and they, on the other hand, are curious about what new things we have prepared for them. Where to find Stodola in Pavlova, the appropriate sign will help you on the main road.

Šamšula: The original owners left us another tradition, that we fill the Burgundian varieties, i.e. Pinot Blanc, Gray, Blue and Chardonnay, into the traditional shape of Burgundian bottles. Other Bordeaux-type bottled wines. For the names of the Burgundian varieties, we stick to the names of their international standard Pinot Noir, Blanc or Gris. Of course, the varieties Pálava and Ryzlink Vlašský etc. are presented in Czech. In addition to the listed varieties, we also produce Riesling, i.e. Riesling, Pálava, Savignon Blanc. Among the blue varieties are the already mentioned Pinot Noir, Merlot and Svatovavřinecké.

Every sommelier has his preferences. Burgundy cultivars are dear to my heart. Unfortunately, it seems that the excellent Pinot Gris, which has been adapted for centuries and has small berries, does not have such a high yield and has to be carefully pressed due to the color of the berries, is on the way out in the Moravian vineyards. Pinot Blanc is also on the decline, which I think is a great shame because this variety behaves better in bottles than Chardonnay and makes incredibly good wines. I am sorry that the Czechs forget about Rulandská bílé. But there are those who like to come to us because of this variety and some even think that we do the best right here in Reisten!

INFO: Reisten

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