Region & History

What is Saaz hop, and why is an entire little town in northwest Bohemia on the World Heritage list? Žatec, known in German as Saaz, sits on the Ohře river, which in German is called the Eger. Hops have been grown around the town for some 700 years, and mentions of hops from the area reach back as far as the 11th century.

Cultivation grew into a business. Merchants bought up hops from the surrounding area, stored, sorted, and shipped them all the way to Western Europe. In the 19th century an entire industrial quarter of packing houses, drying rooms, and warehouses grew up just outside the old town. Walking through the streets today, you'll see brick façades that have nothing to do with beer directly, but everything to do with its most important raw material.

In 2007 the European Union registered Žatecký chmel as a Protected Designation of Origin (PDO). That means only hops from the defined area are allowed to carry this name. The area covers municipalities in the districts of Louny, Rakovník, Chomutov, Kladno, Plzeň-sever, and Rokycany. The protection applies to the hops themselves, not to the beer brewed from them.

In 2023 UNESCO added "Žatec and the Landscape of Saaz Hops" to its World Heritage list. Two parts make up the site: the old town with its industrial quarter, and the rural hop-growing landscape with the villages of Trnovany and Stekník. The two are linked by the Ohře river.

There are only a few breweries here, because the hops themselves travel. Hops from Žatec have gone, and still go, to breweries all over the world — in the Czech Republic, for instance, to Pilsen. Nearby Louny is also part of the hop-growing landscape along the Ohře.