Milan Nestarec is not a winery — I always correct people when they say that. Milan Nestarec is ideas that just happen to be represented through wine.
I'm not selling wine. I'm serving a world view. Using wine as a medium.
I could have chosen another one, but this one is so fun. And social.
I'm 200% positive that the most important thing is the person who makes the wine. It’s not about a varietal, or a famous village in a famous region - because even those wines can get the bad karma of being massacred in the cellar. It's all about the name on the bottle. A name you can trust, because you know how the person works and that it's a style you enjoy. Where they come from and how they treat their vineyards.
Manual harvest, spontaneous fermentation. Slow gentle press. No fining or filtration, no gimmicks, no magic powders. Just a bunch of tanks and old barrels, grape juice and time. The normal way, simply put.All our vineyards are herbicide / pesticide / industrial fertiliser / systemic treatment free. Of course. When speaking about my wine, I usually use the word normal instead of the earlier authentic, natural, artisanal, low-intervention terms. I simply grow vines in the normal way, with no other labels needed. And I see the same thing happening with the winemakers who inspire me. The name on the bottle - a name that you know is trustworthy - is IMO the most important seal of approval. Way more reliable than all the tags and hashtags.
We do use some biodynamic practices, but tbh I don't like how it's become a bit of a marketing gimmick. When working this way in the vineyards, you usually don't have much time left to talk about it. We only use things that we understand, things I consider important, and things that react to what's happening in the vineyard at the given moment. “See what you’re looking at,” as chef Dan Barber writes in his book The Third Plate.
So this is it, my land of freedom. Playgrounds. Stories. Sometimes tabula rasa, sometimes historically conditioned and laid out. I won't tell you about the spacing, plantation density and other technicalities. What matters is my relationship with these places and what makes them produce wines that exceed the… well, normal.
Moravia, Czechia