The hop fields of Žatec
The town of Žatec, known in German as Saaz, lies in the valley of the Ohře in northwest Bohemia. Hops have been grown around it for at least eight centuries. The local variety, called Saaz in English, has a mild, dry and slightly spicy aroma and little harshness, and it is the hop that gave Czech lager its character.
Hop farming is demanding work. The plants are perennials that climb a wire up to seven metres high, and they have to be strung, trained and picked by hand or by machine in a few weeks in late summer. The cones are dried in a kiln and pressed into bales.
Sealed bales
Quality was guarded by law and by habit. From the nineteenth century the hops of the region were inspected and given a lead seal of origin, so that a brewer in Munich or Plzeň could be sure that a bale marked Saaz was what it claimed to be. The town still has the large drying houses and the brick sorting and packing halls where the work was done.
The hop name is protected under European law. In 2023 UNESCO added Žatec and the landscape of the Saaz hop to the World Heritage List.