Miroslav Mayer built Moravia's biggest Czech wine business

Miroslav Mayer is not the most public figure in Czech winemaking, but he is one of its key players. Thirteen years ago he founded the Czech Republic’s first wine merchant, under the Davinus brand, and today he also serves as commercial director of the ZWG.Wine group, which became Moravia’s largest wine producer — with more than a thousand hectares of vineyards — after acquiring the Moravian winery Znovín.

Mayer began his career with one of the most respected winemakers in Czechia — at the Michlovský winery in the Velké Pavlovice and Mikulov regions. He is also a sommelier, though he dislikes the label himself, preferring to talk about the business side of a traditional trade.

The merchant model he brought from France, where it accounts for more than half of all wine sold, turned out to be far more successful than his original idea. “At first I thought I’d put together a collection for friends in the restaurant trade, top restaurants and private clients — a bit of a break from the chains. But the plan changed fast,” Mayer recalls. The Interspar chain, which no longer operates in Czechia today, heard about his project and asked him to put together a collection for it too — so Mayer’s very first invoice was for thirty thousand bottles, a volume he had originally planned to sell over an entire year.

Besides Davinus, Mayer also handles the commercial side of the ZWG.Wine group, backed by the entrepreneurial duo Stanislav Lankouch and Vladimír Viklícký. Last year the group’s companies — Lahofer, Valdberg and Hanzel — moved up a level by buying one of the largest Czech wine producers, the Moravian winery Znovín. As a result, ZWG.Wine, with roughly a thousand hectares of vineyards, became Moravia’s biggest wine operation — by a wide margin over its nearest competitors, who farm half as much land.

“When we put the total vineyard area down on paper, a lot of people asked me if we’d lost our minds. After all, alcohol consumption — especially of still wines — is falling, and not by a few percentage points but by almost ten percent,” Mayer says, describing how market colleagues reacted to the deal.

Unlike football clubs, he says, Czech wineries rarely become a status purchase for the business elite. “There have been cases where someone wanted to buy a winery simply because it’s fashionable and helps build contacts with partners — the idea being to sell a lot of wine among fellow entrepreneurs. But the reality of winemaking is daily, hard work that needs a team of people giving a hundred percent. And sometimes even that isn’t enough,” he adds.

That, Mayer believes, is exactly why buying a winery “on the side” and for pleasure is not the most sustainable long-term model. By his observation, quite a few wineries across Moravia have been put up for sale in recent years.