The official first vintage of Bidule is 2022, but the winemaking journey of Zdeněk Omasta, the winemaker and one of co-founders, started much earlier. Like many of his fellow Moravians, he grew around vineyards that his grandfather used to turn into a small amount of wine for family consumption, and became a hobby winemaker himself with the 2014 vintage. 

Bidule, however, ain’t no leisure activity, as becomes clear right the minute you step into their impressively sleek, modern and generous winery near Brno. (The building doubles as offices for Zdeněk’s business partners’ construction and interior design company.) “We reached the point in our lives when it's time to turn ideas into real acts,” explains Zdeněk who left his high-level IT corporate job to follow his passion for wine.

Great bet: just one sip of their méthode traditionnelle sekts (that represent their main focus and 80 % of the production; the remaining 20 % consist of still wines and pet-nats, using grapes that are too aromatic or dark for sparkling wines) and you understand that this is *something else*. The precision, the freshness, the elegance… give away a meticulous, focused winemaker with clear vision, an impression that is confirmed within several minutes spent walking through the winery and discussing with Zdeněk.

He knows that when making elegant, precise wines, every detail counts, which is why no effort is spared: the grapes are harvested in small crates and direct-pressed as whole bunches (to avoid crushing the grapes pre-press which negatively impacts the quality of the must) on a state-of-the art Italian press, then run by gravity to neutral large barrels for natural fermentation and then bottled on premises for at least a year of prise de mousse on lees.

To further ensure the highest possible quality and consistency, the winery is also equipped with gyropallets for riddling and their own disgorging line, which is not usual in Moravia (these are rather costly technologies, so most local wineries outsource these tasks to several specialists). "It's important to me to do everything by ourselves, also because it gives us the total flexibility to disgorge what we want whenever we want,” Zdeněk says; it also  allows them to use less sulfur during the initial fermentation.