WINE LOVERS snapped up 5,000 passes for access to 101 wine cellars offering a taste of the most recent harvest, as well as older varieties, during the Day of Open Wine Cellars along the Small Carpathian Wine Route on November 14 and 15, the Pravda daily wrote.
The wine route starts in Bratislava and goes on under the feet of the Small Carpathian mountains. Its most remote cellars are in Smolenice and Trnava. The route includes pleasures such as Ján Paták, one of its youngest winemakers, and his 120-year old house, in which he serves Silvánske Zelené (Green Silvaner), an almost forgotten variety in Slovakia. Nearby, Miroslav Duda was serving another specialty – straw-wine style Pinot Blanc.
In Doľany, Ervín Demovič served Veltlínske Zelené (Green Veltliner), the only wine in the country with the right to use the Wines from the Mill trademark, as it is produced in his 300-year-old mill at his 50-year-old vineyard.
The Small Carpathian Wine Route started the Day of Open Cellars in 2000, selling 450 of 500 tickets on offer. But tickets for this year sold out by August, according to Pravda. Anyone who missed this chance to taste Slovak wines has to wait only until May 23, when the cellars will open again to mark St Urban, the patron saint of winemakers.
