Pop-up #28 - ???
To be announced
Reasons

The Manifesto of our Collective

We live in the era of gastro-subcultures: foodies, bloggers, barflies, hops hipsters, coffee fundamentalists and tea diehards are everywhere you look. Only wine is still regarded as if it was just something your grandma drinks when watching the latest episode of Days of Our Lives. And we did not find  it right. In fact, we felt positively p... well, peeved! And so, there was this slightly decadent wine party in the Rooster Nest (not to be confused with Cock Nest or Eagle Nest) and a word was spoken and that word was Collective.

The Collective is a project (we are not afraid to go as far as to call it a concept) which will allow you to get to know our world of great natural wines, but to do so in the not-so-serious manner we believe it deserves. You see, wine is not a complicated thing, only some wine people are. We want to throw parties that are centered around good, unpretentious and unmanipulated wine without a truckload of sulfur. A wine that's not just something you mix with sprite or cola  or use it to wash down jagermeisters, which will make you want to chop your head off the next morning.

Good drinks and good music go together and that is why there will be like-minded DJ’s at our parties. Because wine is not just about folk brass band music and yodeling guys in folk costumes using cotton wool sticks to play string instruments. To us, wine is a new symbol of young urban movement and an emerging subculture. This is how we see it and we, naturally collectively (both these things are sometimes complicated to achieve), do everything in our power to make you see it through our eyes someday. All you need to do is to join our party. Every now and then, most probably on Monday, we will welcome you at a different spot or venue (since we are a pop-up, you know) chosen with a caring and practical eye, where we will be serving wines chosen even more carefully to the most high-tone company we are able to grab together on social and Collective networks. You will love it after the first experience and you will wear your Collective brand as proudly and firmly as we do! (Or we will stick it on you anyways.)

People
Jan Čulík
"No, that is not mousiness, it is supposed to taste like this."

Honza is a being of pure wine energy and he is also the founder, prophet, and the only member of his own church, so called "Čulík Brothers' Church". Members of this sect, whose main temple is in Tábor in Thir wine bar & bed and breakfast, are forbidden to consume wine with added SO2 or to touch conventional (meaning normal) wines. He confuses mousiness and natural taste in wine, although he would never admit it. Jan is a globetrotter with the experience of promoting such wines (including the mousy ones, of course) even overseas. He is a pleasant companion and sought-after comrade in any wine splurge. It is nice to argue and discuss things with him, so you may want to try it, too. More
Lucie Kohoutová
"Do you think that these hipsters understand that it is just a metaironic comment on my part and that I don´t look like this, normally?" - "Well, normally you do."

Lucie is a member of the race of the new super-intelligent metapeople: due to evolutionary pressures some of her instincts are atrophied, such as the need for ever newer handbags or emotional outbursts over strollers. On the other hand, she has fully developed love for good food and wine. She is a typical obnoxious urban millennial; works in a start-up, belongs to the foodbloggers' sect and also a guerilla baking group called Baking bitches. When she is not staring into a device with apple on it, she is always yapping on about the German techno, peated whisky and running (supposed to liberate you). She writes for Ambiente at jidloaradost.cz - sometimes she even judges restaurants, without actually having worked in any. Otherwise, she is a very nice young lady welcoming a visit at midnight by putting half her wine rack and the whole content of her fridge on the table (and putting German techno on, too). Thanks to her many years worth of experience taking care of on-trade and corporate clients of the wine importer called Le Bourgin, she is quite knowledgeable in wine and wine growers. More
Martin Levý
"It´s kinda killed by the barrel and a ton of sulfur."

Martin, born and raised in Moravia, is a young man with an unquenchable desire to make it in the world of strict Prague rules. He is limited neither by his Brno heritage, nor by the fact he comes from a city whose main feature is a black phallus. Fortunately, he has not developed any character flaws apart from being overly pedantic, nit-picking, condescending and constantly splitting hairs. Otherwise, he is the guy you just want to share a house with. Martin works as a head sommelier in top-notch Italian restaurant Aromi and won his spurs in Michelin-starred La Degustation Bohême Bourgeoise, which does mean he is better than you, but being a modest guy he will not lord it over you … much. He can smell mousiness from a mile and he is strongly allergic to the word minerality! His heart falls for the traditional Italian style. He has a deep knowledge of the matter and he is always fair and upright person. So you should like him... More
Dragan Bogdanović
"This is not corked, that is the way Furmint tastes in wood."

A prophet, messiah, and a visionary... are the words you certainly won´t think of when hearing Dragan´s name. A young sommelier suffering from an occasional neurosis, compulsive urge to be always right, and obsession of counting visits of every article he writes for his blog Víno jak chceš (“Wine as you like it”), which is not a blog, because he is not a blogger, are we clear?! Deep inside he is a sensitive and romantic soul who is only enraged when presented to an idiot or semi-sweet Moravian Chardonnay. His wine compass points to France and Austria (and to Muscat from Moravian village of Polešovice, although he will never admit this publicly). He used to be locked up in the basement restaurant Le Terroir, where he cuddled, naked, with dusty bottles of Petrus. But he was discovered, successfully escaped and spent lot of time building Nordic-inspired restaurant Bistrot 104 (although from Brno, Dragan knows exactly where the North is). Now he is stationed in wine bars Monarch and Brut, where he trains for world championship in opening of oysters. People rarely find him nice at the first impression, so give him a second chance. More
Marko Jelič AKA DJ WineGeek
"Stop arguing, wine is about being at ease."

Despite having roots in the hot blooded Balkans, he is the embodiment of peace and tranquillity of wine. He is so at ease many people find him annoying. One could say that he is the Switzerland of the wine world, plus he is a purist. He spends his working days in the basin of Mělník, where he lingers hugging grapevines and attuning himself to their energy flow. If you need to meet him and it is not a business matter, he may answer that he is just finishing his V60 drip - which is a type of drip coffee you cannot spoil with either sugar or milk, so nobody likes it, but everybody drinks it, because they are "cool" - and that he is going to be 15 minutes late. He leaves parties early, but if you manage to take advantage of his momentary distraction and get him to drink enough alcohol, his at-ease-hippy shell will break and a so called "Dark Marko" or "Darko" will come to life. I do not know what can happen then, because I only had the pleasure of meeting him once and I ran away from his rampage. In wine, which he also imports through WineGeek.cz, he prefers low sulphur and above all good people, because they are an essential part of it for him. Živeli! More
Jan Čeřovský
"Fino sherry may seem odd, unpleasant, or even disgusting at first, but it will surely grow on you!"

Another on-line person in our ensemble. Honza started writing his Jižní Svah (“South facing slope”) blog decade ago and since then, he has been hated by sommeliers, feared by importers, revered by wine-growers, and his whims have the power of changing the prices of the next en primeur in Bordeaux… and now let´s be real for a moment. Honestly, nobody gives a damn what he writes there, but he does not care, so what does it matter? You know, being a tiny bespectacled IT guy with a wine and running hobby is not as easy as it sounds. Honza likes, among other things, oxidative wines. That means for example sherry or wines from Jura, which effectively doubles their sales on the Czech market. Sadly, we do not know who the other customer is. When Jan is not arguing with the best sommeliers about Prosecco, he writes quite interesting and informative articles, so you´d better read them at Jizni-svah.cz. His position in our Collective used to be of a non-playing captain and an independent consultant, he tried hard not get his hands dirty with our business. But soon he realised that pouring tons of wine and preaching his knowledge about obscure wine styles to crowds of enthusiastic people might be a great way how to overcome his innate shyness and is now embracing all the crazy stuff Družstvo wants to do. More
Rules
We are nice and sunny-spirited people, but we don’t want any wine anarchy. We´d rather have some mild natural-wine socialism, so we need some ground rules (those apply to events in Czech Republic, see details of events in other countries for their specifics):
  1. We don´t accept credit cards (As the wild tribes fear cameras, we also fear the card terminal would take our souls.)
  2. Everyone who wants to drink will get a tasting list and a glass. The glass is available for a refundable deposit of 200 CZK, which will be deducted from your bill or returned to you when leaving. (Those who do not drink with us, drink against us.)
  3. Each glass (100 ml / 3.4 oz) means a line on your tasting list and each bottle a cross. (Originally, we wanted to mark a deciliter with a circle, but it looked awfully lot like a game of tic-tac-toe.)
  4. Times and events of our parties vary. Pop-up at the same place all the time does not make much sense, does it? To learn about this and more, check our FB and our official webpage DRUZME.SE (Yes, it is a Swedish domain name.)
  5. If you think we are too hipstery, mainly Lucie, then you are probably right...
Past events
Contact
#naturalnekolektivne | facebook | instagram
druzstvowine@gmail.com