N.A.G. – Concubina fehér (white), 2007
For introduction please read this post. For a Concubina white retrospective please refer to this post written almost exactly a year ago.
I never read my previous posts before I taste a wine and neither check it’s bottle. I didn’t even remember how much I liked Concubina 2006. Still, these are two different wines so keep reading.
The review
This cuvée is medium dark golden yellow. Lovely. The nose is very charming, intense, full of warmth and liveliness, a bit perfumy, with notes of pineapple and litchi with a rosemary(!) accent mingled with a hint of very light honey. The very same character’s found on the palate, gentle, warm and soft and certainly could have more acidity. At this point I realise it’s a semi-dry wine with some well integrated residual sugar. The wine will become better and better with more and more minerality which I simply adore. First a mouthful of chalky minerality then rocky minerality, it’s the whole Cenozoic and Precambrian era happening at once. Add a velvety melted butter finish to it. Later on the nose some pistachio. Nice linear finish.
This wine’s at it’s peak or a bit over it no doubt about it. It’s a huge best buy.
Score: 6/7-
Price: HUF 2000
Németh Attila Gábor – Concubina vörös, 2006
Up and coming talent Németh N.A.G. Attila Gábor is one of the titans who are trying to re-establish the reputation of Mátraalja as a region capable of producing excellent white wines and fine red wines. The efforts to prove the latter have not been very convincing so far but white-wise some prominents of this generation have already proved their point. Still, the region’s post-WW2 history is a heavy burden. For how long terroir wine merchants will be able to sell red wines like Karner’s at such a ridiculously high price is another question.
This Concubina has a pale hue with pale purplish reflections. On the nose forest berry fruits with hip dominance. On the palate it has layers of spices with underlying woodyness. Very raw structure. The wine lacks determination and it has badly integrated components.
Unfortunately I call this Mátraalja character. This style lacked the instantaneous appeal and it still does.
Whether Concubina white 2007 is as good as in previous years we’ll find out soon.
Score: 3+
Price: HUF 2000
How Chardonnay, Hárslevelű, Szürkebarát and Sárgamuskotály add up to Riesling?
Well, for an hour at least, as we’ll see, part of the formula will look like this: 60%-27%-13% (the last two combined) and the “substance” is called Concubina in 2006, from the Mátraalja wine of Németh Attila Gábor.
Relatively pale golden color. The nose is pleasantly sweet and fruity, with a chalky mineral undertone and fresh citrus aromas.
On the palate this wine is crispy with fresh, robust but nice acids in huge quantity. Only when I realise the sugar content I come to conclude how acidic this wine is: it’s semi-dry but the sweetness keeps it in balance, even in spite of the medium body. It’s fruity (ripe Mediterranean fruits mainly) with a salty mineral underpinning. Later more ripe exotic fruits like date fruit. The wine matures a lot after opening starting to develop a palate of dry leaf character. The finish remains very short though. Freshness and good acid-sugar balance are the well recognizable strengths of this wine. As many Hungarian white cuvées however, the wine suffers from blowing into bits of its components only a day after opening it. Still, it’s a good wine, fairly priced from a region that started to draw my attention lately.
Score: 6-
Price: HUF 1760
