Moravian Wine Trail

The Lednice estate is one of the most unusual aristocratic landscapes in Central Europe: an English romantic park of over 200 square kilometres, commissioned by the Liechtenstein princes across the 17th–19th centuries and dotted with follies, temples, a minaret, and artificial lakes. The chateau itself — rebuilt in neo-Gothic style in the 1840s — is all turrets and carved sandstone, unexpectedly whimsical for a building of its scale. But it is the park that absorbs most of the time here: the monumental 19th-century greenhouse, one of the largest cast-iron structures of its era; the boat tours along the artificial channels; and the 60-metre Islamic-style Minaret built purely as a folly in 1802, accessible by a spiral staircase that emerges above the treetops with views across the floodplain toward Austria. The landscape has a particular stillness that is difficult to describe. White storks nest in the trees in summer. The effect is quietly enchanting, and it stays with you.

Valtice is the wine capital of the Czech Republic — a claim it wears modestly, being a town of fewer than 4,000 people, but backs up with the Salon Vín: a national competition held annually in the cellars of Valtice Chateau, where the 100 best Czech wines are selected and made available for tasting. The cellar runs beneath the Baroque palace for hundreds of metres; the atmosphere — cool, stone-arched, dimly lit — is unlike any wine-tasting room you have encountered. A tasting here covers the major Moravian varietals: Welschriesling, Müller-Thurgau, Pinot Blanc, Frankovka. The town square is worth a short walk — the plague column, the church with Liechtenstein crypts, and the views toward Austria, whose border runs through vineyards less than a kilometre south. There is no fence, no checkpoint. Just vines continuing on the other side.

Mikulov announces itself from kilometres away: a chalk-white castle on a rocky hill above a town that seems little changed since the 18th century, surrounded by vineyards producing some of the finest wine in the Czech Republic. The town was an important crossroads between Bohemia and Vienna, and its mixed history shows — there was once a thriving Jewish community whose cemetery, one of the largest in Central Europe, climbs the slopes behind the town centre. The castle houses regional museum and wine exhibits, but the reason to visit Mikulov is primarily to walk it: the old Jewish town, the main square with its Baroque fountain, the narrow lanes climbing toward Holy Hill (Svatý kopeček) with Calvary chapels leading to a summit chapel. Below the streets, wine cellars literally carved into the tufa rock are open for tastings. The Pavlov Hills rise immediately east — limestone ridges and vineyards in a protected landscape that continues south into Austria. On a clear afternoon, the light on Mikulov is extraordinary.