Don’t expect this wine look any better than you’d think! You won’t like it: it’s pale blurred ruby with a brownish and pinkish add-on, forget about it.

The nose is empty, quite literally. The palate, however, seems well-balanced, smootly textured and well integrated, all Pinot Noir-esque. In an hour or so my glass begins to fill with the wine fault I like the most: salty minerality. It’s very essential to compensate the sweetness deriving from alcohol (14 percent, mate!) which doesn’t burn and doesn’t feel, well, except the sweetness. I’m sure many people would desire more definition to it but I’m fine with the acidity of this wine as well as with the soft, powdery tannins of it.

Good wine, drinks well and fast.

Etyek wasn’t even on the wine map 10 years ago. Today if you want to get to the Etyek Pincefesztivál you need to face a crowd perhaps 25x the population of the village. And today they’re exporting their know how to Sopron.

Score: 5+(/6-) points

Price: HUF 3 500

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

This is clearly an entry-level wine of Gál Tibor, a quickly cashable asset, so I didn’t expect too much of it.

Pale yellow with greenish reflections. The nose is full of apple and especially pear. It’s intensity falls quicker than gravity would justify. This Leányka is freed of acidity and it’s relatively thin so nothing can disguise its long tartness from the midpalate except some pear flavor passing much quicker than that girl on that particular beach of the Cidade Maravilhosa. And then it’s just emptiness.

Score: 3+

Price: HUF 1400

Btw, haven’t seen the movie “Cidade de Deus” yet? You are missing one of the greatest movies of recent times. Honestly. It’s a must see.

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

Dark ruby just the way it should be. Lovely sour cherry marmalade nose mingled with ripe mulberry and a hint of dark chocolate. Very edgy tannins on the palate, quite hard and a tiny bit tart too. Very nice, long finish with dark chocolate.

One thing is certain: Szent Gaál may not have produced their great wine yet (it’s certainly not this one) but they never produced shamelessly bad wine either, unlike some big names form this region or further to the south-west.

Score: 4+ (now I would give it 5-)

Price: HUF 3 700

Vida Péter’s remarkable achievement of moving out of my radar so quickly ever since our first encounter wasn’t a mistake. Here’s the testimonial.

Pale ruby with a pinkish rim, needless to say.

Intense boredom on the nose with notes of cheapness and a chemical industrial accent. The rest is sour cherry, liquide medicine, iodine, the latter’s carried on through to the palate brutally overshadowed by hard, althogh not too bad tannins which are present in way too much quantity for such a small body. Very empty palate.

It’s been almost 10 years, but some things just do not change.

Score: 3, 3+

Price: HUF 2 300

One of the best Hungarian Sauvignon Blancs I’ve ever had and it’s definitely a good value for the money.

Score: 6+/7- (now I would even say 7, but I always publish the fresh impression)

Price: HUF 3 000

I’m not complaining, I’m just confirming my reinforced idea that Hungarian wines are world famous only in the mind of Hungarians. And I doubt Hungarian wines will ever play a somewhat more important role in international wine drinking. The only problem with this you see is that Hungarian producers have no other choice than turning their attention to the domestic market, which they’ve been serving so far anyway. The realisation that they have no chance abroad combined with a biased (patriotic) domestic demand and little sofistication of the internal market will result in slower development of quality. This is my concern. This doesn’t help preserving the diversity of wines either because there’s little to be preserved here.

Today the hippest buzzword in hungarian wine marketing is versatility. This doesn’t seem like a strategy we chose. The is the only way left apparently, at least until dessert wines become fashionable again.

I don’t want to write a long post about this topic (I’m on vacation after all) so let’s just finally have a picture here from Les Halles (a bistro I highly recommend to anyone visiting the city btw), where half a bottle of Sauterne (sic!) cost appr. USD 250. The question you may ask yourself is why there couldn’t be an Aszú there too, perhaps at somewhat lower cost, to start with?

It turns out that St. Andrea Pinot Noirs are intentionally corked, or so they seem (leasson learned, Ráspi). But the shop clerk says it’s normal, a buyer brought back a lot of six bottles, all corked. I couldn’t believe my ears.

Anyway, this one from Hangács is suspiciously similar to the other two. First, it has the same blurred pinkish brick color, then it has the same bouquet (and that’s not exactly a compliment). Well the cinnamon, rose and woodchip aromas are not exactly repelling but they’re not huge either. The palate is embarrassingly desintegrated, with harsh components, firm tannic backbone and a hint of (positively) sweet compote element. I hoped it’d get better with time but it got worse.

Score: 4+

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