Balatonalmádi Borfesztivál 2009

Not so much of a wine festival than a bazaar and a venue for crappy stage performances (folklore meets hungarian pop music followed by salsa dancing schizofrenia) I strongly recommend everyone to avoid it. A huge crowd stuck in an apparently too narrow promenade encircled by booths of wineries completely make it impossible to enjoy drinking here. Plus you’ll only find one good and one half decent winery anyway (these two being the less popular among the drinkers – only this fact says it all).

I wanted to go to Balatonfüred’s wine days (now weeks actually) as almost every year because it’s more airy and Balatonfüred’s small historical centre is a nice place and the event takes palce between it and the Balaton. This was the plan, but for reasons I won’t disclose here we never made it to Balatonfüred this year.

What saved the Almádi festival was, besides the best lángos I had for many years (not even sold at the festival actually but like 200m away in a regular booth), were the following wines.

Gál Sauvignon Blanc 2008 is a pale wine very fruity on the nose, fresh and light with notes of ripe apple and plesant acidity (also fresh and young). Excellent for hot summer evenings like this. Gál Chardonnay 2006 is a thicker, although also not too heavy wine of an oaky-character, with lots of melted butter on the palate and on the nose but supported by very well integrated and rounded acidity. Firm but soft (almost creamy), this is a very decent techie wine expressing smart use of oak. Gál’s Leányka 2007 is a very simple wine, ultra-light with a bit harsh character and it’s easy to forget. They sold out the red I most wanted to taste on the first day (more than 100 bottles, so the festival is commercially not so unsuccessfully after all) so I went for the Pinot Noir 2004 (I think). After I was positively surprised by the 2002 recently I found this year’s Pinot more dominated by the oak, but overall pleasant, spicy, with soft texture and relatively well balanced and with at least a few years ageing potential. I’ll definitely try this later. I sampled Bárdos Imperiál Cuvée 2007 which is an interesting blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Pinot Noir but I was unable to taste it properly but surely a review will follow soon here.