It's been a great year.
A challenging one. Not easy. It was a lot of work; probably the most we can remember in a long time. But it was worth it.
It was also a year of success, as we were the first in the country to win Winery of the Year - again. After two years we got into the top three Czech winemakers in the Winemaker of the Year competition. And once again, we fought our way into the Salon of Wines. Our Rieslings and Pálavas brought us wonderful medals from all over the world and you shot us to the lucky seventh place in the public vote competition TOP Winemaking Destination.
But most of all, it was a rare year. A year of rare encounters over food, over wine, over music. With you and your loved ones. It's been a year that's given us some amazing gifts. And we'd like to share them with you here.
It's lockdown, covid numbers are breaking records. The first good news comes from the National Wine Salon: for the 16th time in a row, we will be represented - by Straw Pálava 2018! For the second time, we rejoice when the Prague Wine Trophy awards us the status of a 5-star winery and the Prague Premium Gold medal (92 points) for the cuvée Sémillon/Sauvignon 2017. We are also delighted to welcome the Winery of the Year commissioners - we have made it to the final nine and hope to win the title. In the cellar, we will say goodbye to the last bottles of the amazing Riesling 2017 VOC, which will later appear on the wine list of the French 3* Michelin restaurant Arpége and in the Galeries Lafayette wine shop in Paris.
Only two of us (+ cardboard Roman) attend the final evening of the Winery of the Year competition. We leave as winners of the Medium Winery category and the FIRST HISTORIC repeated winners of the Winery of the Year title! Our joy is beyond speaking, and so is the media interest. We are being interviewed for Czech Radio and the podcast How to Make a Winery of the Year. The pruning of the vineyard is disrupted by an unprecedented phenomenon. We are pressing dried grapes that were picked by volunteers in late October 2020 and saved from destruction by rain. The straw Pálava that emerges from them will be the winner of Wine & Degustation magazine's Grand Test of Straw Wines in December.
The third month welcomes us with closed districts, and so our Sales and Marketing Director Dáša Fialová will travel to New York for the VINEXPO wine fair, only virtually, with a talk on The Versatility of Czech Wines (And Why are They Favored by the Trade). We will complete and launch our beautiful new website with the possibility to register for the Sonberk Club. This guarantees not only a club discount on purchases, but also a regular flow of information through our newsletter and access to our non-public wine list.
Spring is coming and the light at the end of the tunnel is finally beginning to shine through. Introducing the new releases; a 2015 Riesling that has been aged in oak barrels and which can keep the tongue and brain occupied for a long time with the depth and nuance of its flavours. We will sell it out completely by December. We have a new outdoor audio tour - eight signposts with stops in the vineyard that you scan with your smartphone and go through at your own pace. We also launch merchandise for women and children for the first time. 100% cotton, designed, sewn and hand printed in the Czech Republic thanks to our collaboration with UAX. We are very happy.
And what happened next? We will tell you in the second part soon.
Would you like to see and experience all this? We look forward to seeing you at Sonberk.
Visit usRegister and get a 10% discount on the purchase of wines. In addition to an attractive system of club discounts for you, we also have a non-public wine offer.
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