Žatec region brings a unique testimony to the tradition of hop growing and its processing in rural and urban buildings.
In January 18th, 2021, the Minister of Culture, Lubomír Zaorálek, signed the documentation for the nomination of Žatec and the landscape of Saaz hops to the UNESCO World Heritage List.
The nomination represents a completely unique cultural landscape, which is composed of two complementary and geographically close components, which demonstrate the impact of growing, processing and trade in hops on the rural and urban environment.
The Saaz hop-growing landscape contains the most valuable and fertile hop fields, on which the world-renowned Saaz hops have been grown and bred for centuries. This hop-growing landscape contains villages with facilities associated with the processing of harvested hops.
The landscape rural component is complemented by the territory of the historical core of the town of Žatec and its Prague suburbs, which are unique in the number of preserved technical monuments, especially from the 19th century, used for the processing and storage of hops.
Read more: Žatec and the Landscape of Saaz Hops to be inscribed on UNESCO World Heritage List
According to the latest report from Central Institute for Supervising and Testing in Agriculture, the total hop production reached 5.925 tons in the Czech Republic in 2020.
The table above includes hop production in all Czech hop growing regions – Saaz, Auscha and Tirschitz. The average yield for all hop varieties grown in the Czech Republic was 1.19 t per hectare.
According to the meeting of International Hop Growers organization (IHGC) in the beginning of this week it is estimated that the hop production of the member states will reach for the year 2020 in total 123 400 t. This is a slight decrease compared to hop production of 2019 which was 130 000 t. According to these estimated the major decreases compared to hop crop 2019 were recorded due to climatic conditions in the USA (-3000 t), Germany (-1500 t), England ( -750 t) and the Czech Republic (- 1200 t).....
