Ceremonial denomination of wine cellar streets took place on a nice sunny Saturday, March 15, 2008, with the attendance of councillors, the club of vintners from Velké Bílovice and a director of vintner fund Ing. Jaroslav Machovec, who was a godfather of the event and symbolically baptized the notice of Saint Urban square.

Velké Bílovice is a town about 40 km south-east from Brno (3 km from the motorway to Bratislava). In Velké Bílovice, there live almost 4 thousand of people, of which a big proportion makes their living on viniculture and viticulture. Velké Bílovice boasts about number of wine cellars. You can find 650 wine cellars here, it is the most cellars in the Czech Republic. Wine cellars create an independent townlet. It is not easy to orientate here, that is why local vintners came with the initiative to make it easier for tourists, who are coming here more and more. This initiative is the denomination of local wine cellar streets.

How this idea emerged

More and more tourists are coming to Velké Bílovice and a visit of local vintner townlet is often their destination. Tourists often suppose that they will visit two or three rows of wine cellars (as in vintner villages nearby). When they find out that local vintner area contains 650 wine cellars they very often get lost, that is why local vintners came with the idea of denomination of wine cellar streets by force of local vintner club chairman, Mr František Zapletal. The town council accepted their proposal. People were asked to make proposals via an enquiry, then the proposals were considered by a task force under administration of councillor Milan Damborský. „Local citizens proposed more than 100 proposals to 37 streets and 3 squares. Significant part of them had its origin in historical and household names. We tried to stick to these names when we were denominating the streets.“ Says councillor Milan Damborský and adds: „Denomination of wine cellar streets is a great idea. In the cellar area in Velké Bílovice, there are about 650 wine cellars. Villages with 1200 or 1500 citizens do not have so many buildings. For example, in famous vintner village Bořetice there are about 500 houses. It means that in Velké Bílovice there are more wine cellars than houses in Bořetice“.

How did individual streets get their names

For example the Belegradská street got historical name, because it leads to the oldest wine cellar quarter called Belegrady. You can find this wine cellar quarter easily, because one of its streets is called Staré Belegrady. Other examples of historical names are streets U Křástelky, Pod Předníma, Půrynská, Pod Panskýma, Ťuhýkov, Pod Krátkýma, Ke Špičáku, U Krejčovej cesty. Not historical, but a long time used name is also a Simering street. This street was called so by one local wine cellar owner, who worked in Wien-Simmering. This name came to use with a little grammatical correction.

Habánská street is called according to the name of anabaptists Habáni. They came to Velké Bílovice in 16th century thanks to the religious tolerance of Moravian aristocrat family of Žerotín, who owned Velké Bílovice between 1532 and 1622. Žerotínova street is given as a memory for this family in the townlet. Habáns refused to fight with a gun in their hands, they worked together and they shared everything. They also grew up children together. They were skillful workers, great vintners and excellent builders. They built many wine cellars in Velké Bílovice. Some of them remained well preserved. After the victory of Habsburg family in the battle of Bílá hora they went to Slovakia, then to Russia and finally to America.

Another street is called Horenského práva; after finishing all vintner works before the grape harvest the so-called „zarážení hory“ takes place here every year. From that moment the entry to vineyard is forbidden to everybody, but there are some exceptions, for example pregnant women. The stealing of grapes was according to the Horenské law punished even with death. The so-called „hotaři“, who were voted during the village meetings were obliged to keep order in vineyards. One street carries their name – Hotařská street.

Eleven short streets next to each other got the names of local wines. They are Cabernetová, Frankovková, Millerová, Muškátová, Neuburgová, Portugalová, Rulandová, Ryzlinková, Svatovavřincová, Tramínová, Veltlínová. The street through which the main road from Velké Bílovice to Čejkovice goes is called Hlavní street.

The name of Prezidentská street comes from the recent history. The president of Czechoslovakia, Antonín Novotný, went through this street to have a look at the modern planting. It is said that he did not like the vineyards very much and that he suggested to plant corn as a better possibility. The names of some streets indicate their origin. Sadová street leads to orchard, Ke kapličce, Na výsluní, V údolíčku, U Machovej studně, Na vyhlídce, Úvoz or for example Desátková street, where 2 former cellars to which people had to hand in a tenth of their harvest are situated. Also all vintners have their street. Its name is Vinařská street.

Local people defined also three squares, which got the names of saints – vintner patrons. These are Saint Urban Square, Saint John Square and Saint Martin Square.

Why the project is carried out

The denomination of wine cellar streets will improve the orientation of visitors of the vintner area where 650 wine cellars can be found. We will have the opportunity to prove this on April 5, 2008, when the third year of the wine wandering FROM WINE CELLAR TO ANOTHER WINE CELLAR takes place.