Milan Nestarec Podfuck

Vintage: 2017

Origin: Moravia, Czech Republic 

Grapes: Pinot Gris, Pinot Noir

Alcohol: 12%

The best wines produced by Milan Nestarec are his white labels; they represent the height of his talent. They are all from his oldest vines, most intriguing micro-locations, and frequently field blends. With the gentlest handling and several years of undisturbed ageing in his cellar, this special energy is kept.

Over the course of its existence, Podfuck has undergone a significant transition, going from a hardcore Pinot Gris that spends three months on the skins to an elegant red where this grape serves as a link between the primary Pinot Noir and the beloved Blaufrankisch. For the 2017 vintage, a bit of Pinot Noir was added to the base of Pinot Gris, elevating the wine to a whole new level, and making it nobler and deeper. The Zadni Hora vineyard, where all of the grapes for this wine are grown, was planted with the current vines in 1988. Only free-run juice, which spent 14 days on skins, was used for this bottling. Podfuck 2017 was bottled in May 2020.

We wondered the same thing as you: why is a wine of this calibre called Podfuck. Blaufrankisch was the initial grape variety planted in the Zadni Hora vineyard, but in 1987 the village was struck by a severe frost that devastated the majority of the vines. Instead of Blaufrankisch, the socialist cooperative chose to replant the vineyard with Pinot Gris, fortunately, a historically significant local clone with extremely dark skin was utilised. So dark that, in 2013, when Milan's wine-making neighbour sampled this wine blindly for the first time, he commended him on producing such a stunning Blaufrankisch or Saint Laurent. He refused to accept Milan when he tried to convince him that it was a Pinot Gris and instead said it was just some podfuk ("cheating" or "trick" in Czech). Milan just adjusted this heaven-sent name and Podfuck was born.