The nation which gave the world pilsner has quietly built something overlooked by many ‘world whisky’ overviews. Czechia, known better in English as Czech Republic, is not starting this whisky industry from scratch. There are centuries of experience in malting and brewing here, not to mention coopers, fruit distillers, and excellent sources of local materials: grain, wood, and even peat. Czech Republic has all the geographic and cultural foundations needed to make whisky comparable to Scotland (in quality, if not quantity).
As in Scotland, geography underpins Czech whisky’s development. Czech Republic is a land of two halves, or more specifically, two principal historical provinces: Bohemia and Moravia. Bohemia is larger, and home to the national capital of Prague. Bohemia has a population of around seven million to Moravia’s three, neatly reflecting the balance of whisky distilleries in the two provinces. Just as the Lowlands and Highlands contributed to Scotch whisky’s modern development, the fledgling Czech whisky industry draws on both Bohemian and Moravian crafts. This specific combination represents the country’s unique offer to the whisky world.
Take brewing and malting, both cornerstones of Czech life since the 12th century. Bohemia is more suited to growing barley, yet much of Czech’s malt comes from Bruntál in the Moravian-Silesian region. Malt has been produced here for at least 500 years, and Moravian distillers TOSH and R Jelínek use Bruntál malt, sourcing barley from nearby Těšetice. With so much high-quality brewing in the country, Czech malt is such an obvious choice for local distillers that it hardly needs to be specified.
Czech Republic is one of the few countries besides Scotland to smoke whiskies with local peat. Radlík and Dlabka produce single malts smoked to around 20ppm, and Jelínek uses peat from Hora Svatého Šebestiána (a Bohemian town on the other side of the country) to produce Gold Cock Peated. This 30ppm single malt is so popular that the bottling strength was recently downshifted to 45% ABV.
Some Czech distilleries use yeast to add another local touch. Prádlo ferments with a Czech baker’s yeast, reminiscent of Mackmyra’s approach in Sweden. Otherwise, fermentation times are liable to vary as much as in Scotland. Gold Cock only ferments for three days, while TOSH pushes its wash as far as 12 days for further ester formation before a slow distillation.
The historic roots of the oldest Czech distilleries are as impressive as they are disputed. Green Tree (Palírna U Zeleného Stromu) claims to date back to 1518, which would make it the oldest whisky distillery in all of Europe. Brewing rights were granted to some residents of Prostějov that year, but distillation is only mentioned in Prostějov from 1610. Distillation was just being introduced to central Europe around this time, so that’s still an impressive age.
More so when you consider the similar situation of Bushmills: the ‘1610’ on its bottles refers to an usquebaugh distilling licence from that general part of Antrim. The modern Bushmills Company only dates to 1784, so Green Tree’s claim might yet hold water. Certainly by 1810, Green Tree was Moravia’s largest distillery, focusing on fruit distillates like slivovice. While whisky making is a modern innovation in Czech Republic, taking the baton from this longer history of fruit spirits, only a handful of Scottish distilleries can boast a similar age.
In more modern times, two Czech whisky distilleries developed at Těšetice and Prádlo. The former produced an early form of Gold Cock single malt, which was sold across the country and the USSR throughout the 1980s. Hammerhead, the other Czech whisky you might have seen before the 2010s, came from Prádlo. All stills ran dry following the Velvet Revolution in 1989, and Czech whisky would wait until the 2000s to be revived.
As a large existing distiller of fruit brandies, Rudolf Jelínek acquired the Gold Cock brand, and began producing new spirit in the town of Vizovice by 2008. Likewise, production at Prádlo restarted in 2010. Having roamed the distillery grounds as a child, Prádlo’s master distiller Kristina Demelová has now spent 12 years rebuilding the brand.
For Gold Cock, production was revamped and expanded in 2013–14, including the idea of bottling Gold Cock at 49.2% ABV to reference Vizovice’s latitude (49.2º N). By 2018, the current range had solidified. The 10 Years Old is Jelínek’s flagship expression, but some pre-closure stock still exists in the Gold Cock 20 Years Old. Prádlo likewise has a 10 Years Old available (fully produced at the revived distillery), while 18- and 30-year-old expressions use the last of the 1980s stock. It goes to show — Czech whisky is not as new as it might first seem!
This same history combines with newer styles of whisky making at TOSH, which is situated on the same Těšetice grounds where Czech Republic’s first whisky was produced in 1973. Describing itself as a ‘community craft distillery’, TOSH opened in 2017. It sells 15-month-aged spirit as ‘Lafayette’, and a smoked four-year-old whisky as ‘King Barley’.
While Czech whisky’s history largely started in Moravia, Green Tree unusually straddles both sides of the country. Home of the Stará Myslivecká brand (Old Hunter), it has headquarters in Ústí nad Labem (Bohemia) and production in Prostějov (Moravia). Old Hunter is a column-distilled rye comparable to a Scotch grain whisky, aged in ex-bourbon casks for four to seven years and bottled at 40% ABV.
While double-distilled single malt is generally preferred by Czech distillers, Svach and Jelínek have also produced rye whiskies. The Gold Cock Rye is double distilled from a mashbill of 60:40 rye and barley, before ageing for five years in ex-bourbon. Unfortunately, this year’s EU-Canada debacle of rye whisky labelling will surely stifle further developments here for some time.
Besides the larger, historic distilleries, a selection of smaller, newer outfits have appeared in recent years, dotted across Bohemia. Václav Šitner produces Martin’s Barrel, a single malt made using smoked Czech barley and aged for five years in Czech oak casks. Dlabka distillery was created by a small group who moved from Prague to the north Bohemian countryside in 2020. Its malts include American oak-aged bottlings, and an apricot brandy cask finish. Palírna Radlík, previously a small fruit distillery near Prague, underwent significant expansion in 2018 and has now released its first small batches of whisky: Peated (10–30ppm), Unpeated, and Chocolate Malt.
Agnes Palírna’s first whisky will finish maturing later this year. I tried a sample of Agnes spirit in 2024: lightly peated Belgian malt, aged in second fill oloroso casks for 22 months, 59% ABV cask strength. The spirit was not rough at all. Its unique rhum agricole-esque nose was incredibly promising, and shows how much quality and experience can be found in Czech Republic’s smaller whisky distilleries.
In 2015, Destilérka Svach began producing Old Well single malts. An especially Scotophilic distillery, it imports Golden Promise and Maris Otter barley from the UK. Its distilling yeast and 40ppm peated malt likewise come from Scotland, and Svach lays down about 30 new casks each year. Distiller Lukas Andrlik tells me how single malt whisky has been his love for 17 years. That’s not to say Andrlik is not proud of Old Well’s origins in southern Bohemia, which he shares as a local from nearby České Budějovice. One peated Old Well release is not just ‘Czech oak’ matured, but ‘Bohemian oak’ specifically.
Speaking of oak, Czech whisky is dedicated to using local wood almost as much as local grain. Except for Green Tree, every distillery here uses Czech oak for some or all of their maturation. Radlík, Prádlo, and Jelínek specifically use their country’s ‘winter’ sessile oak (quercus petraea). In English, this is often called Cornish, Irish, or Welsh oak, as it prefers to grow in more exposed or rocky areas (hence ‘petraea’, or ‘of rocky places’).
These Czech casks are another Bohemia-Moravia success story. Many are heavily charred 220-290L vessels produced by the Fryzelka and Bařina cooperages in Moravia. While Czech winemaking developed in parallel with the country’s famous brewing, 96 per cent comes from the region just south of Brno, Moravia’s provincial capital. Czech wine is often referred to simply as ‘Moravian wine’ for this reason. TOSH describes local Moravian red wine casks as its maturation hallmark, and some are also used at Svach and Radlík in Bohemia. While bourbon and sherry casks are also understandably popular, the larger producers like Jelínek still use Czech oak as their majority cask type.
All these Czech distillers take pains to explore other distilleries and their ideas. I’ve seen a TOSH group signature on distillery walls as far away as Spain. Radlík cites “friends from the [Czech] whisky community” for its decision to step in and “expand the nascent Czech whisky scene”. Svach and Jelínek work together particularly closely. Each year the two distilleries produce a pair of blended malts in 60:40 ratios, re-combining their brand names in the process to make Gold Well and Old Cock.
This reflects the positive growth of Czechia’s wider whisky scene. Jiří Šinogl, an independent bottler and founder of Whisky Essence (a Czech whisky podcast), has his nose to the ground on this subject. Šinogl asserts that several Czech whiskies are already worthy comparable to Scottish counterparts, but the impression of Czech whisky as an underdog is hard to shake. Poor associations also linger from the country’s 2012 methanol scandal, when dozens of people died as a result of spiked alcohol. This tragedy helped prompt the EU to ban methanol as antifreeze in 2018.
Thankfully, more Czech consumers explored whisky during Covid-19 lockdowns, and the country’s whisky scene has grown alongside a general rise in living standards. More rigorous regulation following the methanol scandal has ensured higher quality, represented by the wave of small distilleries like Agnes and Radlík focusing on high quality whiskies.
More whisky bars and events have also become available. Prague has Whisky & Kilt, and the Whiskeria (home of Mirka Kverková and her Ladies’ Whisky Club). For whisky lovers in Moravia, there’s Bulldog Cafe (Breclav) and the Black Stuff (Olomouc), the latter also seeing many exclusive Gold Cock releases, such as this year’s eight-year-old stout cask.
Czech whisky is able to gather momentum and support from local whisky lovers. Local consumers increasingly know what they want from whisky, and are proud of their local drams’ developing identities. “Czech whisky should not be like Scotch whisky, except in one aspect”, Šinogl declares, “and that is quality.” As he notes, there are now decades of Czech whiskymaking to look back on. The prospects for Czech whisky in 2025 look a lot better than they did in 1989.
In 19th-century Scotland, whisky poured from the union of industrial and agricultural Lowlands with clean water and isolated valleys in the Highlands. Today, Czech whisky is a product of Bohemian industry and Moravian winemaking, uniting malters and coopers from both sides of the country. And Czech Republic is almost exactly the same size as Scotland, too.
Even with few distilleries, this specific, distinctive combination creates all the right ingredients for a high-quality national style of Czech whisky to develop. Many Czech distillers already work together and complement each other, forming an ecosystem of larger mainstays and smaller experimenters (such as Jelínek and Svach respectively). How these producers continue to work together will determine the future of Czech whisky, but the current outlook is extremely positive.
