Budapest Daily Review

Why am I writing about this in a Hungarian wine blog?

Benchmarking, that’s for.

I did not want to open this bottle yet, but I’ve noticed a drop of what seemed to me as red wine at the cork, so I ran home from my dad’s cellar and I was desperate to find out whether one of my best kept treasures really went wrong. It didn’t.

Everyone’s dream is (well, mine is) to just wander around in a beautiful area enjoying a good time and suddenly find a small, hidden winery whose’ owners are extremely friendly and their wine is just amazing and at the end it turns out to be an excellent value for money.

I really recommend that you check out their website and read their stories yourself here. In a nutshell:

The winery is one of the properties of a large estate which used to belong to Prince Ginori Conti, a descendant of one of Florence’s oldest families. Floriana Ginori Conti inherited the winery from her father in the 1970s, and began in 1980 to produce a Chianti Classico with the “Poggerino” label.
In 1999 she handed over the property to her two children, Piero and Benedetta Lanza, who had been managing it since 1988.

When we arrived at the farm building, one smiling guy and a sympathetic girl attended us. The guy was dressed farm worker. They knew too much about the wines for workers, so I had to realize that they are the owners. It turned out that they do as much of the physical works as they can themselves. Their wines were very friendly too, expensive though but we dot used to this by then in Tuscany.

The review

Il Poggerino – Bugialla 2001, Chianti Classico

Medium-deep ripe cherry color, sharp tannins are the first impressions as I open the bottle. No worries, no need to rush.

3 hours later its tannins are already smooth, velvet and I could swear that its color became much deeper and the bitterness had gone. Not too intense smell, it’s rather tobacco than fruits, although I can smell some nice, ripe cherry (but no sweetness!), plum and a bit of blueberry. There’s more: coffee beans and pepper, but not too much. Not an easy to love wine, but steady, not evolving too much in the glass. Does not need to. Full-bodied, round. Almost perfectly balanced. The 13,5% alcohol does not disturb me.

I could have kept this wine for another 5 years easy.

Score:7 (But the equation does not include my enthusiasm described in the intro. It would be a 9 then)

Price: EUR 30

Ps: Good to know that they have guest rooms too and the house is perfectly located near Radda.

I must admit I am not a regular festival visitor and I was surprised by the size of the Somló Tavasz festival: about a dozen twin kiosks, a hundred visitors and a huge tent describe well the scale of this event on the meadow on the outskirts of Somlóvásárhely. According to my winemaker friend, 40% of the visitors are regular festivalgoers who never miss one (hence the marketing value of the event is a bit questionable). All ages and all types of people were present: old ladies from the neighbouring villages sat in the tent quitely sipping their drinks while staring at the stage to check the appearance of a folklore dance group, there were families wandering around, kids riding horses, and some young folks trying to get a bit drunk. I really couldn’t spot any of the urban yuppies here who usually frequent these types of events. And no foreigners either.

It was charming and looked more like a big family reunion in a family where winemaking tradition’s got its roots from times when Juhfark was not yet recognised as a standalone grape.

Besides the local names (Györgykovács, Tornai, etc.) almost the same number of guest winemakers offered their wines, with few exceptions almost only from 2006 and 2005.

I really don’t think that festivals allow you to do some in-depth analysis of wine, it’s rather a quick scan of where are we standing and tasting unknown wines and trying to memorise those that you would like to try at home. So here are my notes, but since I did swallow all of these (at least in quantities of 1/2 dl) the objectivity is questionalbe. So I keep the order, I leave it to you what “filter” you apply to my judgement.

Sorry, but that’s what it is drinking red wines from Eger region from the harvest of 2001. It’s like people buying Rolling Stones records today, trying to recapture the magic of 1965 although they should know… I had this Cabernet Franc from the late Tibor Gál and

the truth is that based on a typically franc smell it could have been a surprise, in a good way. The franc-ish taste quickly turns into harsh tannins and some bitterness. I appreciate the latter in ales but not so much in wines. Then I left it to breath for 2 hours and ate something with it and that helped a little bit. I must taste the newer ones because there’s some hope in it, I sense it.

Score: 4

Price: HUF 3200 (EUR 12)