St. Martin is one of the major saints of the Catholic Church and honoring him with a variety of festivals was once common throughout Europe and here in the Czech Republic as well. In some places, it marked the beginning of a fasting period, hence the heavy food of Goose and dumplings, and it kept people in good stead through the cold months. In modern times, this festival declined in popularity as fasting became less common.
Today, the main association with Czech culture is the saying, “St. Martin comes on his white horse,” which means that the snow is coming. The white horse being the snow. So people begin looking for snow from November 11th forward... and of course, Prague and many areas of CZ have had snow already...last month!
Nov. 11 is also St. Martin's Day, the Czech name day for those men named Martin AND is now most recognized as THE day for the release of the Czech and Moravian answer to beaujoulais: St Martin's wine; Svatomartinské víno. This is A BIG event.
This is a very young crisp clean white wine, a new wine, hardly a month in the bottles and very similar to Beaujolais but white, and made from the Müller-Thurgau and Veltlínské červené grapes. It is quite popular here. It should be consumed before the end of the year it is made. This year only an estimated 800 to 900 thousand bottles of St. Martin's wine will be produced. They will go fast. I got two bottles, as you can see, one each from different vineyards, but vineyards that are close together south of Brno in Morava.
So Today marks THE day when this new vintage of wine - Svatomartinské víno - traditionally makes its first public appearance in bars, Vinoteks(bars only for wine) and restaurants throughout the Czech Republic. Na zdravi!
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