Although I believe that wines can be fully appreciated when tasted hours after your last meal (desserts excluded), I recognise that wine and food pairing is an important business and very few sommeliers are actually good at it (Budapest’s Four Season’s Italian sommelier is one of them). On the other hand, a meal or indeed, a tasting menu can be more exciting with a glass of well paired wine. This is probably stating the obvious but I had to write an introduction to this post so you don’t realise immediately that I’m not going to write wine reviews today, but about a related topic which is dining at good restaurants, more precisely at Budapest’s supposedly best.

When I first dined in Costes (aka the only Michelin star restaurant in Hungary as of 2010) 2-3 years ago I wrote that it was the best Hungarian restaurant, full stop. It wasn’t an overstatement, I felt quite confident about it for Costes had been so much superior to any other local restaurant in terms of innovation, preparation and presentation that it was undoubtedly the best in town. I also knew that it was just as good or even better than some Michelin star restaurants elsewhere (notably, certainly better than a particular one star restaurant in London’s Soho, as long as food is concerned although I’m not so sure about the atmosphere). Now that the Portuguese chef Miguel Rocha Vieira is back (Seja bemvindo!) I was lucky enough to visit Costes three times in 2 weeks lately so I hope you’ll forgive me if I jump to some conclusions here.

A major problem with their heating system was apparent on my first visit and unfortunately they couldn’t (or didn’t) fix it in two weeks,  but the front desk people were even cooler than the December frost outside. The arrogance and negligence of the waiters remained the same as two years ago, in spite of the owner sitting next to our table in one occasion (with a former Lou Lou employee who I happened to recognise). This could have been a good sign, because if the kitchen folk didn’t change much either then I could have been expecting a terrific performance from them. But this time the waiters’ arrogance was combined with a sort of carelessness and even incompetence that was already a bit scary (when serving the plates, one fella insisted to interrupt our rather important (well, let’s face it, rather important to me) discussion to tell us exactly what’s on the plate in front of us, feeding us with information we’ve already wknown or just seen (I’m sure you can recognise lentils) as if there were subspecies thought to be extinct of an already rare exotic deep ocean seeweed, whilst he seemed not to be enjoying himself too much either). I’m used to getting humiliated by clerks and waiters, they do it all the time with you in Hungary but sometimes it only costs you one Euro or so but for a hundred Euros, it opens a whole new dimension, believe me!

More importantly, the food was OK. Yes, it wasn’t terrific. The amuse bouche were the same every time, and I loved them every time. I don’t want to go through the menus, there were some well made courses too but some were below expectations. The chicken, for instance, may have been organically fed Poulet Noir but it was a bit boring. Good, but boring, and being simply good might be too little from someone aspiring for a star or two.

The sommelier was the friendliest of the staff but Costes’ wine selection is a bit disappointing. The wines not just don’t represent the best of Hungary as one might expect, they don’t even get close to it but few (Szepsy Furmint 2008, to give you a for instance). And in total there are maybe 20 or 30 wines in their cellar, or at least on offer, and that includes whites, reds and sweet wines and even a Port. I wasn’t particularily disappointed by the pairing they offered with the tasting menus and I made my own choices most of the time anyway, but there’s not much chosing to do from a list of 20, is there?

The overall conclusion is that Costes remains one of the best retaurants in Budapest which in itself doesn’t guarantee you any standard. I remind you that we’re talking about a country where no one, literally, no one is able to make a proper baguette and if I want to buy a half decent croissant on the corner it costs me more than at Ladurée. There isn’t a decent bakery in the whole country (Villa Bagatell included), so why would there be good restaurants, one might wonder? (To be fair, the bread I had at Olimpia restaurant today was OK, but this was a once in a month occasion)

Further to the improvements in the kitchen, the whole Costes experience could be so much better with a working heating system, some well trained, polite and helpful waiters and a carefully selected, well stocked wine cellar. The U-turn Costes appears to take might not be as sharp and quick as, say, the democracy takes in this country, but it doesn’t look very promising either.

Twenty years ago, in a much simpler world (with the eyes of a teenager) I had ready answers for the questions of “best of” lists. Metallica was the best band (before the black album, of course), Catch 22 was the best book ever and black skinny jeans with a converse and a skinny The Cult t-shirt was the best outfit. Some years ago the world stopped being black and white and so straightforward. There’s no best of. And there’s no favorite either. I don’t have a favorite book or album any more or band, for that matter. There’s plenty of good stuff however, and there’s even more rubbish. Why would wines be any different?

Still, there could be best of some things. Like the best label quality and best technology wines are undoubtedly Sauska’s. But all the rest would be too obscure. Best terroir wine? Nonsense. Best winemaker? Let’s set up the criteria first. Or better not. Best wine? Who could tell?

I was thinking about the best hangover for a few minutes, but I gave up. Then more interesting questions came to my mind. Like best pairing of beetroot and wine, what would that be, anyone?

And eventually a vague conjecture’s become a more and more objective, clear and transparent recognition, a rock solid conviction that the best blog about Hungarian wines written in English language is Budapest Daily Review. Let’s face it, it’s also the worst blog about Hungarian wines written in English language, but that’s another list.

Instead of the best of list, here’s some very personal thoughts to wrap up this year.

- Bad news for red wine fans: good white wines in Hungary still outnumber the good red wines. Good news: I’m no longer a hard core red wine fan.

- The best white wines still come from Tokaj, and still come sweet. This, unfortunately, does not fit the current wine consumer trends.

- My interest in Furmint and Olaszrizling have increased, while Riesling remains my personal favourite white varietal.

- Some regions are more and more exciting: Somló and south of Balaton are definitely worth to be followed closely.

- I no longer think that Hungarians should not produce Pinot Noir and Syrah. There are good examples of both  out there.

- There’s still no such a thing as Hungarian style as long as wines are concerned. In fact, we have no clue what Hungarian wines should be like, except maybe the tiny Tokaj region but even there are major issues, and here we come to our next serious problem which is

- the lack of a much needed proper classification system in Hungary. I suggested a system similar to the German, especially the Rhine region’s system some time ago and I stil believe in it.

- I’m still convinced that Hungarian wines, especially the reds, are overpriced and are not competitive on international scale. And they’ll continue to be. That’s because we’re too introverted, narrow-minded, coward and assertive to face this all, and we have a very selective memory as long as history is concerned.

- I’m convinced that the best  Hungarian wines are those which are unique, or at least different, in some way, or otherwise interesting.

Thank you very much for reading this blog. Although I’d be much happier if you’d participate more in the discussion (this is a blog, after all). I don’t know for how long this blog will be going on, 2010 was all about Facebook, Twitter, Kindle and iPhone apps so blogging’s become a bit outdated. But I’m not on facebook and I’m not Lady Gaga either to use Twitter to spread my thoughts so if you come back tomorrow, you probably going to see me writing about the 3 sparkling wines I’m planning to finish off today and tomorrow morning (a Kreinbacher rosé Brut, a Moet Imperial and a Szentesi Pinot Noir rosé Brut).

I wish you all a very happy new year and a full glass of good Champagne for tonight!

Ps: read more printed books!!! Or simply read more books! And buy vinyl!

This bon mot (clearily a wisdom) of the former regional CFO of a well-known multi-national company’s Hungarian leadership describes best my thoughts about this:

Someone in the Hungarian wine industry has gone mad once again. Well, why wouldn’t…

After a series of database crashes and the website being unavailable Sunday whole day and Monday morning, Hungary’s by far the best (and only) wine blog in English language was moved to a new server. Now it’s up and running but for how long I cannot tell (it became available and disappeared several times this morning). I’ll try to pump this information through into the RSS feed before the next crash.

So after a new visual some other minor changes will be introduced as of now and some you may have already noticed.

Scoring. First of all scoring will be changed but I don’t know exactly how and until I find out there will be no scores at all. The 10 points scale I invented is good enough for regular readers but many visitors aren’t familiar with it so it becomes a bit confusing (5 looks like a low scores but in fact it’s not that bad if you read the description). I considered a 100 points scale several times but I don’t want to seem so arrogant as to think that I can distinguish two wines tasted two years apart by one single point on a scale of 100. That’s only possible if you drink maybe 10-15 different wines a day.

Evaluation. As there will be no scoring some direction about the quality and value of the wines will be given by some verbal evaluation and using tags like fairly priced, overrated/overpriced or best buy. I also introduce the term “recommended” any perhaps some others to indicate if a wine is worth buying even if it wouldbe overpriced based on traditional scoring.

Pictures. Photos have been missing lately. This is because I lost the cable I need to connect the old Cannon apparel to the computer. As soon as I find it there’ll be pictures again. In fact, there will be more pictures. I like pictures. I like taking pictures. I hope you’ll like them too.

Style. The blog has become sometimes a bit personal. Unforunately that won’t change. Some of you may prefer short wine reviews instead of boring stories but this is an independent blog and I’m writing it because I’m enjoying it. Although this is not a catalogue of wine reviews, I still hope you’ll find good and useful reviews in the posts.

Searching and browsing: browsing hasn’t been made much easier recently but at least I found a way to put a search box on the pain page. Until I find a better theme which makes browsing simpler I’ll try to rearrange a bit the category and tag structure, make some consolidation and we’ll see.

Content: I’m a little bit tired of drinking low quality wines, to be honest with you. Therefore there may be fewer posts about cheap wines in the future (I can’t promise there will be more reviews about good or expensive wines).

Thank you for reading this all and thank you for reading the blog. Please keep on reading and participating, a comment from you is always very much appreciated either we have different opinion or not.

thewhineguy

I found this very cool theme and fell in love with it. It has some disadvantages though. It doesn’t support searching, pictures on the main page and a decent category display, to name a few. I know it’s annoying, I should know: I’m the most loyal reader and user of the search function of the blog. So please don’t get frustrated, if you find it horrible just drop me a message and I’ll rethink a compromise between look and functionality.

There’s other fantastic news too, for Facebook lovers at least. Now you can like or recommend a post and share this joy with hundreds of your friends. I’m expecing that this will boost traffic to my blog and I can finally get filthy rich (the reason I started it in the first place), leave my miserable job, buy my own winery, get a massive follower base of attractive females and retire. I’d like this to be happenening soon, so please hurry up with the Like buttons.

thewhineguy