As we get spooked by the warning of beer shortages because of climate change we’re putting our Hop in Zatec.
Hoptown was rightly given the recognition it so richly deserves last month with UNESCO awarding the Czechia town World Heritage status.
The first hop area in the world to be credited thus.
With Zatec becoming one of 17 sites at the heart of Europe, an honour the Czechs hold close to their hearts.
Just as they do their beer with our Czechs pals quick to tell you that more people drink beer in their country.
Per head of population compared to anywhere else in the world.
Here for the beer
And few places take their beer more seriously than Zatec.
As we found when sampling its charms in the heady days before Covid.
Now it’s no exaggeration to say that Zatec only exists because of its beer.
With the town housing the highest concentration of buildings connected with hop processing and trade anywhere in the world.
Brewseum
With the best place to learn everything you ever need to know about hops right there in Hop Museum.
Where they’ll tell you that over their 700 years of turning hops into beer that they will regularly forego water for themselves.
So that the hops can get a drink… and they can get the rewards down the road.
Zatec runs to the cycle of time and life.
Clock this
So where Prague has its much-visited Astronomical Clock, Zatec has its Beer Astronomical Clock.
Where the diagrams on the clock face illustrate the dance with the devil of a drinker.
Not that that should put you off your Zatec bar Hop.
Because as they put the frighteners up us over our beer and the climate crisis.
We’re putting our Hop in Zatec.
And, of course, Czechia is one of our favourite getaways with Ryanair from £40.33.
