Czechia · Other producers

Vinařství Plenér

Small Moravian estate making dry, unfiltered, spontaneously fermented wines from organic limestone parcels beneath the Pálava hills, founded in 2016 by winemaker Dominika Černohorská and orthodontist-turned-vigneron Ivo Marek.

The producer

Vinařství Plenér farms approximately 5 hectares across three village sites in South Moravia: Klentnice, Pavlov, and Bavorov, all sitting on limestone-derived soils at the foot of the Pálava hills. Dominika Černohorská makes the wine. Ivo Marek co-founded the estate with her in 2016 after leaving his orthodontic practice in Brno. Neither came from a winemaking family. They revived dormant parcels, farmed organically from the first vintage, and built a range around a single working principle: dry, unfiltered wines that carry the mineral, saline character of the limestone beneath them.

The estate produces around 25,000 bottles a year across three groups: single-variety whites from Sylvánské zelené, Welschriesling, Chardonnay, Pálava, and others; two field-blend cuvées named Leonard, one white and one rosé, both harvested from a single parcel with all varieties together; and reds from Blaufränkisch and Saint Laurent. All wines ferment spontaneously with native yeasts and are bottled without filtration. The Chardonnay is skin-macerated. The winery describes the wines in three words: dry, salty, true.

Known for

Field-blend cuvées from single limestone parcels, spontaneously fermented and bottled unfiltered

Notable facts

The story

The Dentist and the Limestone

Ivo Marek spent his working days looking into people's mouths. He was an orthodontist in Brno when he and Dominika Černohorská began talking about the parcels under Pálava: old vineyard sites in Klentnice, Pavlov, and Bavorov that had gone quiet, changed hands, or fallen out of production entirely. In 2016 they took them on. Marek closed his practice. Černohorská, who already worked in wine, became the winemaker. The two of them began farming organically on limestone-derived soils in one of the warmest corners of the Czech Republic, reviving ground that had grown grapes before either of them was born. The name they chose, Plenér, is the Czech word for painting in the open air. The first vintage came from that reclaimed land.

From the atlas

Vinařství Plenér

At A Glance

The Producer

Vinařství Plenér is a small organic winery in Pavlov, a village at the foot of the Pálava hills in South Moravia. Dominika Černohorská makes the wine. Ivo Marek, who was working as an orthodontist, co-founded the estate with her in 2016. Neither came from a winemaking family. They revived dormant parcels across three villages and built a range around dry, unfiltered wines that carry the limestone character of the place.

The name Plenér comes from the Czech term for painting outdoors, en plein air. The idea it carries into the winery is directness: wine made in the landscape, from what the parcels give, without correction in the cellar. That framing runs through every decision in the range, from spontaneous fermentation to bottling without filtration.

Place

Pálava is a limestone ridge in South Moravia, close to the Austrian and Slovak borders, rising above the floodplain of the Dyje and Morava rivers. The Pálava Protected Landscape Area covers a compact stretch of rocky slopes, dry grassland, and old vineyard sites that have been worked intermittently for centuries. The climate here is among the warmest and driest in the Czech Republic, a continental character with long summer days and cool nights that preserves acidity in the grapes even at full ripeness.

Plenér farms three separate village sites along the limestone base: Klentnice to the northwest, Pavlov in the centre, and Bavorov to the south. Each sits on the same parent rock but at slightly different elevations and exposures. The limestone running through all three sites inclines the wines toward a mineral, saline quality that Černohorská and Marek have adopted as the estate's working description: dry, salty, true.

Soil And Site

The vineyards at Klentnice, Pavlov, and Bavorov all sit on limestone-derived soils, the geological base of the Pálava hills. Limestone retains some moisture through the driest summer months, drains freely after rain, and provides a mineral feed that marks the wine's finish with a chalk-edged salinity. Organic farming across all parcels means no synthetic herbicides or pesticides, which preserves the soil biology and allows vine roots to draw from greater depth.

The parcels Černohorská and Marek took on in 2016 included old vineyard sites that had gone out of production or changed hands. Returning those sites to cultivation, rather than planting new land, connected the estate from the outset to an older pattern of vineyard use in this part of Moravia.

Story

Plenér began with a decision to leave another life behind. Ivo Marek was running an orthodontic practice when he and Dominika Černohorská chose to farm together in Pálava. Černohorská already worked in wine. Marek did not. In 2016 they began reviving old parcels across Klentnice, Pavlov, and Bavorov, farming organically from the start.

The winery built its range around two principles that were unusual in the region at the time: all wines fermented spontaneously with native yeasts, and all wines bottled without filtration. Both choices push texture and character into the glass in ways that a conventional approach would smooth out. Spontaneous fermentation produces wines with more complexity and less predictability than inoculated ferments. Bottling without filtration keeps more solids in suspension and gives the wines a slight haze and a fuller mouthfeel. Together, those decisions define the Plenér style as plainly as the limestone defines the site.

The estate's two field-blend cuvées, Cuvée Leonard and Rosé Leonard, emerged as the signature wines. Field blending, harvesting multiple grape varieties from the same parcel at the same time and fermenting them together, is an old practice that most modern estates abandoned in favour of single-variety vinification. Plenér revived it here as the most direct expression of what the parcel gives rather than what any single grape delivers.

Vineyards And Cellar

Organic farming across all five hectares covers the full range of practices: no synthetic chemistry in the vineyard, attention to soil health and natural growing cycles, and a low-intervention approach that lets the vine set its own rhythm. Organic farming begins with respect for nature and natural cycles.

In the cellar, spontaneous fermentation with native yeasts is the central choice. Native ferments take longer and behave less predictably than commercial yeast ferments, but they carry more of the site's microbial character into the finished wine. Bottling without filtration preserves natural sediment and protein, giving the wines a fuller texture. Minimal sulfite additions keep the wine alive in the bottle rather than stabilised into a fixed state. Select whites, including the Chardonnay, are macerated on their skins before pressing, extracting phenolics, colour, and texture that straight-pressed whites do not carry.

Wines

The range reads in three groups. Single-variety whites come from individual limestone parcels across the three village sites: Sylvánské zelené (Green Sylvaner), Vlašák (Welschriesling), Chardonnay, Pálava, and Müller-Thurgau are among the varieties vinified separately. The Chardonnay is skin-macerated, which gives it more body and a faintly amber edge compared to the other whites. Pálava is a Moravian grape crossing of Traminer and Müller-Thurgau, bred for the region's warm climate; it brings aromatic richness with a dry finish when handled without residual sugar.

The field-blend cuvées sit at the centre of the range: Cuvée Leonard (white) and Rosé Leonard, both made from multiple varieties harvested together from a single parcel and fermented as a combined lot. The precise variety composition of each blend is not publicly specified, which is consistent with field-blend logic: the parcel and the year determine what goes in, not a fixed recipe.

Reds come from Blaufränkisch and Saint Laurent, the two red varieties planted across the estate's parcels. Blaufränkisch, known locally as Frankovka, is the dominant red grape of South Moravia, producing wines with high acidity, firm tannin, and dark fruit. Saint Laurent is a softer, earlier-ripening variety that sits alongside it in the Moravian red canon. Both are fermented spontaneously and bottled unfiltered in line with the estate's broader practice.

Across all three groups, the unifying character is dryness and saline mineral length. The unfiltered, low-sulfite approach means each wine carries some natural variation between vintages and individual bottles.

In The Glass

The Plenér whites open with restrained fruit and move quickly to a mineral, saline mid-palate. Limestone-grown grapes in a warm continental climate produce wines with real ripeness and firm acidity at the same time: the warmth builds fruit weight, the cool nights and limestone root environment hold freshness. Spontaneous fermentation adds a faint yeasty complexity, a slightly wilder aromatic register than commercially fermented wines from the same region.

The skin-macerated Chardonnay sits apart from the rest of the white range: phenolic grip from the skins, amber tint, more textural body, and a dry, slightly tannic finish. It is closer in feel to a light amber wine than a conventional white.

The Leonard field blends carry the broadest parcel character. Because multiple varieties ferment together, the wines have layered aromatics that shift between batches. The Rosé Leonard gets its colour from the mix of varieties in the parcel rather than from a deliberate rosé-making process, which keeps it dry and relatively pale.

The reds from Frankovka and Saint Laurent are dry, with tannin and acidity that belong to the Moravian red style: no extraction for weight, no oak for sweetness, just the fruit and the mineral finish that limestone soils and continental climate produce.

A Bottle To Understand It

Cuvée Leonard is the white field blend from a single parcel, harvested with all varieties together, fermented spontaneously, and bottled without filtration. It is the bottle where the limestone site, the field-blend philosophy, and the unfiltered cellar work all land in the same glass. The wine is dry, with a saline mineral finish, moderate body from the mix of varieties, and the slight textural weight that unfined, unfiltered whites carry. It does not taste like any single variety; it tastes like the parcel. Start here to understand what Plenér is farming and what Dominika Černohorská does with it in the cellar.

Anecdote

Ivo Marek spent his working days looking into people's mouths. He was an orthodontist in Brno when he and Dominika Černohorská began talking about the parcels under Pálava: old vineyard sites in Klentnice, Pavlov, and Bavorov that had gone quiet, changed hands, or fallen out of production entirely. In 2016 they took them on. Marek closed his practice. Černohorská, who already worked in wine, became the winemaker. The two of them began farming organically on limestone-derived soils in one of the warmest corners of the Czech Republic, reviving ground that had grown grapes before either of them was born. The name they chose, Plenér, is the Czech word for painting in the open air. The first vintage came from that reclaimed land.

Final Word

Vinařství Plenér is a young Moravian estate with a clear set of choices: organic farming on limestone, spontaneous fermentation, no filtration, and field-blend cuvées that harvest the parcel rather than the variety. The range is small, the production is limited to around 25,000 bottles, and the wines carry the dry, saline mineral character of the Pálava hills. Cuvée Leonard is the right bottle to start with. Everything else in the range extends from the same parcel logic and the same cellar philosophy.

Sources

Open Vinařství Plenér in the interactive map →