Vrbice - High is the church in Vrbice; higher still is the August sky under which vineyards ripen to please starlings.

The settlement was founded during the German colonisation at the beginning of the 13th century, its citizens were free but had to fulfil a sentry duty. The existing church was built as late as the beginning of the 20th century - nowadays the shrine, built in neo-Romanesque style, dominates the surrounding area. Vrbice is located on hillsides and tableland: due to a tougher climate, viticulture developed more slowly here than in the surrounding villages; wine specialists say only in the last decade has it become a centre for red wines of the highest quality. More than 150 hectares of vineyards, whose green colour is set off by golden fields of corn, are located in a hilly landscape adorning the local settlement. The vineyards bear the following names: Široký, Záhumenice, Strážka, Šudoněk, Krátký, Dlúhý, Ochoze and U Boží Muky. The best wines from this locality are the cultivars of Neuburger, Welschriesling, Grüner Veltliner, Gewürztraminer, Sauvignon, Saint Laurent, Lemberger and Blauer Portigieser. In the recent years, growing of the Zweigertrebe variety has become popular once again.     

The noble black mildew on Moravian conglomerates

The two localities with cellars in Vrbice were constructed across an interval of several centuries, and they are quite different in nature. The older cellar colony Na Sklepech, which forms the two lower storeys of wine constructions in the settlement, came into existence within the second half of the 17th century and is now part of the village development. As a rule, these are stone multi-storey buildings with partly buried pressing rooms and long, vaulted cellars. The flat ceilings of pressing rooms usually possess wooden beams and are connected to the cellars by a descending linking corridor. Some pressing rooms still have original floors of compacted earth. The front entrance into the pressing room is framed by a massive žudro (see the dictionary at the end). The wooden gable is fitted with a small door for stacking hay. Legend has it that these constructions were linked by underground corridors to the fort of Čejkovice and the corridors were used at the times of looting raids as a hiding place for the local population. The cellar colony Stráž is a locality of a greater renown. These cellars were dug up in hillsides of conglomerate rock under the church and make up five storeys, one above another, with each storey having its own name: Na Vyhlídce, Podkova, Pod Kostelem, Pod Větřákem and Pod Novýma. The first cellars here were built around the end of the 18th century. The pressing house with its stone front was added to the underground corridors in the middle of the last century.               

Presúz – the entrance part of the cellar – is constructed of excavated stone and equipped with a stone gable wall – very often this wall is constructed of two types of stone or stone is combined with brick. The predilection for the Gothic arch is a local peculiarity – at times this is a three-pinned arch. The space above the door is usually whitewashed and sometimes decorated with a painting of vine grapes or the local church. The noble black mildew on walls is proof of the stable ambience so desirable for the fermentation and preservation of wine. The premises are constructed as a park, which encourages a friendly get-together on roughly hewed benches in the shade of a historic press with a view over the local landscape. The compact appearance of the complex, which is so rarely found elsewhere, was designed by the bricklayer František Michna in the 1950s and 1960s. This look is disturbed only by a few above-ground cellars with tasteless plaster located in Pod Břehem street.      

Easter exhibition of wines

Singing by the cellars accompanied by wine tasting (July)

Feast (the end of August)

Locking of the mountain (September)

Sanctification of young wines (27^th December)