I lost a minor fortune on faulty Ráspi wines already. If you’d buy Ráspi wine despite my cautions you have to take serious risk management measures, like I do. For those new to the world of faulty wines: Ráspi wines are often more like tricky, obscure structured financial products (sometimes very high yield attractive assets but sometimes toxic rubbish in your wine portfolio). In fact, I believe there should be  regulated market for a derivative product like CDS (credit default swap) to hedge your disposure to corked Ráspi wines, supervised by both PSZÁF (and possibly FSA) AND the a committee consisting of the big4 audit firms, chaired by Attila Gere or some other member of the community Ráspi hates so much.

Now you may think that I’m against Ráspi as a whole. Well I’m not. I’m a fan of the maniac actually but I refuse to buy his wines (well, no longer apparently). He’s hard working, runs a good restaurant in Fertőrákos (and a not so good one in Budapest) where he’s chef of cuisine with a philosophy I happen to like very much.

I bought Kopár Cuvée 2007 (two bottels actually) because i) unlike in the past, this time I bought them in Budapest so I can return them to the merchant if I want to and ii) a pair was on sale at discount at this particular merchant. An anticipated surprise: I didn’t regret it (although, one bottle is still intact).

This wine expresses elements of a well defined Ráspi style. Like all Ráspi wines I’ve ever seen this cuvée (whose grape composition is a mistery) is blurred brownish, of a medium deep tone. Stuffy bouquet, instead of clean aromas. Earthy notes, soil mingled with apricot, almond and pomegranate, later it’s sweet with a chocolate accent.

On the palate it’s rich with a salty minerally character supported by sour tannins and rustic acidity. I like the beet flavour and the juicy pomegranate sweetness mingled with salt and minerals, not so much the underpinning. Soon the wine evolves peppery aromas and I suspect it doesn’t stop there but before I know it we finish off the bottle.

This wine doesn’t score 6- points because any sip from it would be so good (because it’s not). But because it’s misterious, predictably unpredictable so in every sip of it you’ll discover something new.

Score: 5+/6-

Price: HUF 2000 (HUF 1800 with a discount)

There are more people out there who are recently more interested in Ráspi’s new restaurant about to open in Budapest than his wines. I’m now inclined to be one of them. When I first visited him in Fertőrákos a new wave of cool restaurants started to emerge in Hungary which are now well established trendy places. So now Ráspi’s no longer so unique although the high-end restaurant business was hit hard by the recession (I just went to Onyx the other day and we had the whole place for us only for an entire hour), and Lou Lou’s closure for instance must be painful for many of us. Anyway, Ráspi’s performance in the kitchen has been less volatile than in the cellar so I’ll definitely be there (maybe I’ll still be able to afford a tasting menu, unlike his Máté cuvée for instance).

I reviewed this rosé already when it was still a young, fresh rosé and I iked it. And I still do. It still has a fresh, mineral character with a brassy color and many many mineral notes. And some unusual notes too, not so unusual from Ráspi though: something it feels closest to a refinery’s smell and the taste of a detergent. And it tastes a bit of a raw turkey breast too (don’t ask me how do I know how that tastes). Firm structure and crisp acidity. As you see, it’s a good wine.

Score: 4

The same Ráspi wine is usually described by the divided wine society (including regular drinkers and serious professionals) as either i) extremely complex ii) dull iii) simply faulty. I spent, I may say, quite a sum already on trying to understand the hype behind Horvát József’s wines. After several blind tastings, a visit to the master himself, a dozen bottles consumed at home I now tend to agree with the latter group in most cases. Despite all the expressed fanaticism with which Ráspi arguably dedicates himself to winemaking and his obvious efforts to distinguish himself from almost all known winemakers in the country (not to mention the rest of the world) I came to the conclusion that buying Ráspi wines doesn’t pay off. Yes they can be complex and pleasant.Yes I understand how important handicraft winemaking is to him and I admire his work and sophistication in the kitchen. I also used to think that I’m very unlucky in selecting the right bottles. I also came to a point when I thought I may not appreciate enough the exotic finess of the really good wines. After so many purchases and having drank really fine wines I now know that neither of these was the case, or not entirely. Still, I let you decide. This Kékfrankos, although being one of the cheapest wines of Ráspi, has many of the typical elements of 90% of the Ráspi wines I’ve tasted so far, including some of the most expensive wines you can buy in this country.

It has a pale brownish-ruby color. The nose is a mix of different fungi and not just the ones you appreciate. The wine is thick and lacks substance. It’s too acidic for such a small body and the wine becomes more and more sour as time passes. The palate has no clean fruity or mineral elements, it’s a muddy mixture of undefined ones. It’s short on the finish except an appalling sour sensation.

One might simply say that the wine I opened was corked. But then 9 out of 10 Ráspi wines are corked in my experience, regardless of the vintage.

I still have a bottle of Máté Cuvée 2006 left which now sells for a fortune. I’m afraid I may never get to know why.

Ráspi wines are more alive than Rolling Stones on tour but Ráspi wines change much more in a few months than Charlie Watts’ mimicry over several decades. Here’s another testimony of this. I tasted this Mágus Cuvée 2006 once at the master’s restaurant at Fertőrákos and then again in late 2008. You can read the tasting notes here from back in November.

Medium pale ruby color with an almost watery pink rim. Unlike most Ráspi wines this one has a relatively rich bouquet already at opening, complex but not very intense with earth, chocolate and smoky elements. Quite warm. Even a sour cherry stewed in Cognac and wrapped in dark chocolate (called Konyakmeggy in Hungary). Now this wine has a small-medium body almost empty and watery through to the midpalate. The wine has pleasant powdery tannins which become silky after an hour. Later on the nose asian spices. The palate is quite interesting once salty then with a grappa accent. The wine appreciates decanting and it changes a lot even in matter of hours.

Score: 6, 6+

Price: HUF 4 500

Soltvadkert belongs to Hungary’s largest wine region located north-east of Szekszárd on the plain called Kunság. Infamous for high yields and low quality, the region failed to gain reputation for its winemakers until 2007 when Frittmann János was elected winemaker of the year and suddenly the demand for his budget wines soaked up his wines from the shelves of hypermarkets. I picked another rosé ,a bit more expensive but not less interesting: you can always expect Ráspi to surprise you and why would rosé be an exception?

The reviews

I ran into a Kékfrankos rosé from 2008. Pale pink color with brassy reflections. This rosé has succulent, relatively intense but light nose, full of fruity aromas (raspberry mingles here with strawberry with a marajucá accent). This thin wine’s a bit sparkling on the palate with salty mineral accent here which flows into a relatively long finish. It’s a bit sweet on the peak of the tongue and on the mid palate it has a dry-mineral texture lying on crisp acidity. At very cool temperature it loses some of this complexity. Warming up a little the nose will have a candy element and watermelon on the palate. The wine’s very light bodied but pleasant with decent complexity and a surprising mineral character.

Score: 4

Price: HUF 950

Ráspi’s Rosé Cuvée from 2007 (dominantly Kékfrankos too) has a very similar color with a a little bit darker tone. Now this rosé has more intense nose with raspberry and strawberry notes. The palate seems to have some residual sugar but it’s well balanced by a salty texture. Very aromatic with cherry compote and watermelon elements. This medium bodied wine has a wet-stony salty character which hides the alcohol (14% against only 12% in Frittmann’s) so it doesn’t burn. This wine has a pleasant long finish. I reviewed this wine already once and the cork broke just like that time. Ráspi’s yet to find a good cork supplier.

Score: 5

Price: HUF 1 500

This is a crazy idea. Or is it! These two come from 200 kms away from each other but they’re thousands of virtual miles away from each other in terms of wine. But this time, this fact in a certain way helped me to put these wines into perspective.

Ráspi – Kékfrankos Selection, 2005

This Kékfrankos has a pale brownish color and the wine has a very quick move in the glass. And indeed, it’s thin and flimsy on the palate. The nose is spicy with salty-minerality. It has some cherry aroma on the finish. Its tannins are powdery. Give it some time (2 hours), and the wine will open a little bit more. But it’s a simple, although not a common wine.

Ráspi could break into the mainstream with this wine, if he wished, although on the lower shelves only.

Score: 4, 4+

Price: HUF 4 900

Bock – Cabernet Sauvignon, 2005

This Cabernet has got a lot of leather on the nose mingled with different farmyard elements.

On the palate, this full-bodied wine has a heavy dry tobacco character, lots of tobacco’s. Not the finest tobacco though. It breaks to the nose from the palate. The structure could be more firm, the tannins and extracts could be better integrated.

I used to get more excited about Bock’s Cabernet Sauvignons in the past. I think we both changed.

Score: 4+/5-

Price: HUF 3 400

What a modest title. I came up with it in only 1 minute of thinking. In my defense: it’s search-engine friendly and it’s true, from my perspective. Anyway, here’s the almost complete list of tasted wines and their score from 2008.

One remark, except the festival notes, all reviews were written based on at least 1/2 bottle of wine tasted by me alone over several hours, at least once over this period. Even wines presented in quick notes. Any occasional exception was mentioned in the given post, but they were maximum 2 or 3, if any.

Tasting Scores 2008

Wine Festival

Tasting Scores

I’m not particularly good in pairing food and wines. Although I became interested in it I’ve never had the time to learn about it. Besides, my major problem is always whether to pick a wine and chose the right food, or the other way around. To be honest, I don’t think the first makes too much sense. And since I think (and maybe I’m wrong) that most wines will show their best values and will be most enjoyable if one didn’t eat anything at all for hours prior to or during drinking the wine, this, most of the time doesn’t cause any problem to me. I usually taste a wine for hours before finishing the bottle off with some food. Restaurants and Xmas are exceptions.

So in the case of the wines in this post, I tasted them first before any meal but eventually we started eating before I could finish my several hours long drinking for only the pleasure of it.

Ráspi – Mithras Cuvée, 2006

Medium pale color. Not very clean, as you can see on the picture.

This cuvée has a very unusual nose. First, its very complex, I felt I couldn’t name one third of the aromas I could sniff. Second, it’s very light and medium fresh. But most important of all, it’s very different. Well, there are  common intense floral and vinous notes an Irsai Olivér would have, but there’s minerality too and this unsolvable thing which is very Ráspi.

On the palate it has the usual salty-minerality character with the above mentioned Irsai elements and a grassy undertone. The wine has medium-small body and a good structure for such. The biting salty-minerality in the middle of the tongue soon moves backwards and leaves a long finish back there, with some bitterness sitting on the salt.

Later the nose develops into a very interesting ramen soup with crab, which is very interesting and pleasant.

Socre: 4/4+

Price: HUF 1 000 (This is how much I paid to the winemaker but the actual retail price is unknown to me)

Hétszőlő – Hárslevelű Late Harvest ,2005

Bright golden color. It has a fruity nose with intense pear aromas. On the palate, stewed pear, peach and later apple elements and a medium level of acidic sensation. Not bad from someone who only really believes in Aszú wines in Tokaj.

Score: 4 points

Bussay – Esküvé, 2006

Everything I wrote here still applies to the wine. Acidic character with a medium-small body, pale color and lively move. I gave it 4 points this time but it really may be just because of the wines and food I had before drinking it. Still a good wine, fairly priced.

Malatinszky – Cabernet Sauvignon, 2000

Medium deep brownish-ruby color with a brick color rim. It has a lively move at opening. I don’t know whether it has any scientific reason or it’s just my mind playing tricks on me but I tend to see old wines getting darker, slower and more concentrated after a few hours of decanting. This is what happened with this wine as well.

From opening it has a chalky-smoky character on the nose mingled with black-currant and later black-berry and sour cherry. Interestingly its tannins are very soft at opening but becoming harsh after a few minutes before finally smoothing again. The wine has a bit more than medium acidity and a sour-bitter character from the beginning until several hours later. It’s relatively small body is made more pleasant by a nutmeat element on the palate.

Score: 5, 5+ points

C. Da Silva S.A. (V.N. De Gaia) – Cruzados (Vinho de Porto)

Drinking Port wine at Xmas is considered a major treason by many Hungarians. I had different plans myself (although I’m not one of them), but my father suggested to open a Port wine which we brought to him from Portugal in 2001. The label has no vintage which in Porto means that it’s a mix of different (sometimes poorer) vintages.

The special about the wine is that unlike most Port wines this one is a white Port but I’m not sure if it’s actually made of white grapes. Anyway, it has a pale rum color with orange-brassy reflections. It also has a very appealing bottle which also reminds me of old rum bottles.

The nose is dried-grape, burnt sugar and cognac and the palate provides further evidence of brandy: the alcohol (19%) burns. This wine spent a lot of time in barrel and this, combined with the above elements doesn’t allow any tannin or acidity to be noticed. On the other hand it has a long praline-like finish with herbs and canned quince elements added.

I’m not sure if it would be fair to compare a Port wine with any other wine so I won’t give any points here. Let’s just say that it’s a very pleasant drink but doesn’t really compare to a Tokaji or a Sauternes.

I could have shared with you all my notes from a visit at Ráspi restaurant in Fertőrákos but as I wrote in one of my previous posts, I considered them quite unreliable and decided not to publish them like that. Instead I tasted some of them again later at home, like these two wines a few days ago and I’ll share here with you my notes as I keep re-tasting them all.

Ráspi Leányka, 2007

Pale brassy golden color with greenish reflections.

Salty-Stony-mineral bouquet mingled with banana notes on the and with a tiny bit of a disturbing element (something like being corked not not quite). Interesting, in spite of this, not a common nose, but very Ráspi.

On the palate the first thing coming into my mind is how little it gives back from the fruity nose. The salty-minerality’s there and I appreciate it, as always. Besides minerality, the wine has a bitter acidity character with some residual sugar, but the structure is flimsy. The short finish leaves mostly an unpleasant impression, supported by Mediterranean spices and a fruity element.

It’s an interesting wine with a major fault.

Score: 3+

Price:

Ráspi Rosé Cuvée, 2007

Very bright, lively rosé color with onion shell reflections.

It has a lively move  too in the glass, releasing an interesting meat bouquet. On the palate it shows a bit robust body for a rosé, with dominant strawberry and raspberry notes and sweetness of residual sugar supported by enough acidity. But the wine could have a better structure. And there’s the compulsory salty minerality, especially in the long and pleasant finish.

Score: 4

Following another pointless debate about József “Ráspi” Horváth as a person and his wines on a well-known Hungarian blog, I’ve decided to open a bottle of his wines to validate my notes that I took a few weeks ago when I visited his restaurant in Fertőrákos.

Mágus Cuvée is an above entry-level wine (price-wise) but not cheap at all. My perception is that Ráspi wine prices tend to correlate with the number of bottles left and to a much lesser extent with their quality. So this wine could be any good or bad, although the fact that many of his wines from 2006 have long sold out made me suspicious. Here I must criticize his practice of sometimes selling the whole lot to a single person or a small group of people and putting on general sale some less-fancied wine by these groups at a relatively high price. Still, he was complaining about the mortgages he took, claiming to be very poor for putting only 30 000 bottles on sale a year from 21 hectares which indicates a very high limitation indeed.

I put this wine in par with a Chianti Classico which has the same price and I had it just the day before.

The review

Ráspi – Mágus Cuvée, 2006

The bouquet has very rich aromas of elegant berry-fruit at opening. After only 30 minutes the nose will remain intense but full of paprika and a smoky element.

The wine feels much older on the palate with silky tannins and round acidity. You have to give it 2 hours and it will open more, with the nose full of smoke and a chalky character mingled with Asian spices and on the palate ripe cherry in a rather big body. It has a long, mineral finish with a slightly burning alcohol – but due to my high tolerance of it I’m not disturbed by it. And it still opens more, becoming more intense in all aspects. The spices, especially white pepper are surprisingly fresh. 2-3 hours after opening the bouquet is still powerful with fat, dark soil in the middle. It drinks well in large gulps with a very pleasant, mouth-filling minerality.

Score: 6 points

Price: HUF 2 860/ EUR 11

Lamole Di Lamole, Chianti Classico Riserva, 2004

I bought my frist bottle of Lamole di Lamole near Gaile in Chianti, in the picturesque hills at Lamole di Lamole. I was impressed by the fruits coming from the bottle then and now that the wine is available at a local merchants on sale, I decided to try to put the Ráspi cuvée against this Chianti Classico Riserva, for they now have practically the same price.

Cherry-ruby color with purplish, rosé rim. Intense fresh sour-cherry aromas at decanting. Later in the glass Asian spice-driven bouquet with turmeric, curry and chili oil. Later the spices mingle with fine tobacco.

On the palate crispy acidity and young, fresh, still nice tannins are providing the backbone for the medium body with a leather undertone.

The day after the tannins become smoother, the spices even more complex and the palate adding pure fine 95% chocolate and minerality.

Score: 5+/6- points