Richard Stávek is experimental and insightful, producing wine in the South Moravia region of the Czech Republic since the 1990’s. Stávek has 15 hectares of land in South Moravia, 4.5 of which are dedicated to his vineyard. The rest is home to animal life, sea buckthorn bushes, berries for brandy, and more. His vineyard is home to mostly indigenous grape varieties, many of which are field blended in his wines.

He is a co-founder of Autentisté, a group of natural winemakers in the Czech Republic rooted in Central European tradition and focused on producing terroir-driven wines. In a region primarily known in the beverage world for beer, Stávek and his fellow winemakers take pride in producing wines truly representative of their land. Autentisté insists on low-yield production using hand-picked grapes, with organic farming practices and, in the cellar, natural fermentation with no added yeasts, low sulfur, and no genetically modified organisms or additives.

Mladý Boček is the perfect expression of Stávek’s (and Autentisté’s) principles- it is a wine truly of its place. In 2012, Stávek planted the vines for Boček, the name of this plot, as an attempt to gauge the performance of local grape varieties Rubinet and Sevar. The result is a wine of vivid color and rousing acidity- black currant and elderberry fruitiness along with wild herbs and churned earth on the nose and palate.

Its fun and upbeat- it’s a wine that has you over for dinner and not the other way around.

B.F.M.B. stands for “Black Friday for Mlady Boček” – the 2020 vintage saw a very little yield of the Sevar variety (due to spring rains that affected flowering), so the cuvée sports significantly less of it than usual.

Vineyard: experimental fieldblend, planted in 2012. Sandy slopes of Bočky, Veselý / Němčičky, farmed organically by Richard himself.

Making of: Grapes are hand-harvested and whole bunches are fermented in an open-topped barrel for about 10 days with only indigenous yeast. The grapes are foot-stomped, and the wine then spends 10 months in old acacia barrels of various sizes, with regular batonnage. Unfiltered and unfined, bottled with a tiny bit of SO2.

-Jenny & Francois