Czech wine

I worked with the wines from Vinium, which we called Doma, Czech for home, about 10 years ago in the New York, New Jersey, Maryland and Washington DC markets. The wines were $4.99 US retail, we had a muller-thergau, white blend, vavririshke(sp), frankova, and red blend. The wines were also bought by the Safeway chain in the UK. I got to try a Pinot Noir and Cabernet Sauvignon but they would have been more expensive. The wines showed great promise however ther were many problems with the US BATF about labelling and although a first shipment of 400 cases sold out in a month or two, the second shipment was delayed and retailers selected other wines in that price range and it was hard to recapture the shelf space. We had temporary labels from BATF good only forthe first shipment. The BATF didn't recognise that vavriniske and frankova were varietal names and we had to re-label. This delayed Vinium for about 3 critical months in resupplying. One of the problems Vinium had is that the local population preferred beer to wine and there was little domestic market, hence the need to concentrate on low end wines for cash flow. By the time we got BATF to recognise the Czech grape varieties we had no need or demand for a third shipment.

The young lady who was the promoter for these wines was very energetic and got the Doma wines on the shelves in Maryland & DC with my help but we were unable to sustain interest and the project failed.

I've been to Prague many times and have always enjoyed Frankovka. Can't seem to find it over here though. Anyone know an importer?

Tom