A name that means “secret,” and a story nearly a thousand years in the keeping
The Name
The secret of the Hron and Žitava
Somewhere in the hill country between the Hron and Žitava rivers, south of Nitra, two monks were once sent to map every settlement in the valley. The story goes that they nearly missed this one, tucked into a forested fold of land, it barely showed itself at all.
When the monks finally found it, the people living there told them simply that their home was so remote, so lost in the wilderness, that it was secret. The monks wrote the word down as they heard it: Tajná. Almost a thousand years on, the village, and the winery that took its name, are still called exactly that.
“I have always dreamed of creating a product that embodies art.”
Rastislav Deméš · Founder, Tajna Vineyards & Winery
The vineyards
Two plots, planted six years apart
The Land
Where the rivers keep the valley hidden
The estate farms 25 hectares across two sites on the gentle, southwest-facing slopes at around 175 metres, just enough elevation and the right angle to the sun to bring the fruit slowly to ripeness. Both sites share the same medium-heavy clay, threaded through with stones that hold the day’s warmth long after dusk.
The vines have been farmed organically from the outset, and the vineyard earned full organic soil certification in 2022 - no shortcuts, the land left to find its own balance.
Vineyard Sári
Planted 2011–2013
Area 15.95 ha
Density 5,000 vines / ha
Spacing 2.2 × 0.9 m
Soil Clay, stone-flecked
Vineyard nad Hoferskoú
Planted 2017
Area 9 ha
Density 5,680 vines / ha
Spacing 2.2 × 0.8 m
Soil Clay, stone-flecked
Certified organic since 2022, and farmed that way from the very first vintage, alongside a standing partnership that brings people from marginalised communities into paid work on the vineyard.
The Founder
A biologist who kept coming back
Rastislav Deméš trained as a biologist, not a winemaker, but the landscape around Tajná kept pulling him back: the long evenings, the light over the vines at dusk, a quiet corner of Slovakia he didn’t want to see paved over. Everything, as he puts it, seemed to lead him to wine.
What he built treats a bottle as more than something to sell: a way of connecting the land, the people who work it, and whoever ends up sharing it round a table.
“I have always dreamed of creating a product that embodies art.”
Rastislav Deméš · Founder, Tajna Vineyards & Winery
