Wine not?

I'd wanted to see the film "Spotlight", but the cinema where it was showing was a 15-minute walk from our tram stop and it was POURING rain out. So we ducked into a nearby wine bar called Bokovka, snuggled up and never did make it to the movie because the cheese and wine were just too fetching.

Bokovka goodies

The sommelier, Roman, took his time explaining the vín to us and even whipped out a Czech wine map to point out where various grapes were grown. We were seduced by a bottle labeled "Sideways" (which is English for the Czech word "Bokovka"), and Roman told us it was made by a young guy in the Pálava Region in South Moravia.

So guess where we took our long-weekend holiday for midterm break?

You guessed it - Czech wine country!

We stayed at a nondescript pension in the village of Pavlov and wandered in and out of tiny little family-owned wine cellars, sampling the wares, snacking on smoked meat and cheese, and sticking coins in the damp cellar walls. Not sure what the point of that was, but as you can see behind my head, lots of people did it.

Our highlight, though was the wine tasting we'd booked at NEPRAŠ & Co., the makers of the "Sideways" wine we'd had in Prague.

The owner, Ondřej, and his mother, Ludmila, walked us through their offerings and were extraordinarily informative. We learned so much about vineyards, grape varieties, Czech viticulture history and so on; we can't speak highly enough about the experience!