Illustrative stock photo (source: Sme/Jozef Jakubčo)
Wine lovers can experience the atmosphere of wine cellars (viecha) in Pezinok until October. Every week from Wednesday to Saturday there will be one winery offering its products in an authentic environment, the TASR newswire reported.
Wine-makers will introduce their wines always from 17:00 to 21:00, in September and October until 20:00. The detailed programme can be found here.
The Small-Carpathian Museum in Pezinok, an organiser of the events, wants to connect history, wine-making and tourism. Together with the Association of Pezinok wine-makers, they renewed the tradition of viecha. Selling wines in Viecha was a royal right in the former Hungarian Empire. Towns needed to fill the treasury by selling their own wine, so wine-makers got the opportunity to sell only on the given date.
Follow vine-leaf wreaths
“Viecha was allowed only in spaces that belonged to the wine-maker. A customer could drink the wine at the spot or take it to go. A wine-maker could sell the wine for two weeks, maximum five times a year. It was possible to sell it until 22:00,” the town website informs.
The house of wine-makers was marked by a wreath of vine leaves and ribbons, so passers-by knew where they could stop for water, wine and sometimes a toast or baked goose.
“Thanks to wine selling at viecha, smaller wine-makers could sell one-third of the year's production,” organisers explained the importance of this event. The tradition stopped after the totalitarian regime took over in 1948. To learn more about the history of wine-making, visit the Small-Carpathian Museum in Pezinok.
