Pántlika owns 40 hectares around Dörgicse, a well-preserved small village with a stunning view of lake Balaton, and it probably makes it the largest winery of than region. Although the cellar’s based in a former socialist co-op “hangar”, the front-end of the headquarters is a nice old-fashioned stone house. After this dichotomy I was very much looking forward to tasting their wines, made by a 19 year-old (!) winemaker.

The reviews

The Olaszrizling Válogatás 2006 was the first ever made in the history of the winery. Pale yellow with greenish reflections, this Olaszrizling has an intense nettle nose. On the palate it’s light, thin and quite empty for a “selection” with relatively low yield per vine. Slightly sparkling on the palate with nettle and elderberry flavors. It’s a bit tart from the mid-palate.

Score: 3+ points

Sauvignon Blanc 2008. This pale yellow wine also has nettle aromas on the nose and on the palate but a bit more warm and with a flinty-gas accent. Better textured, more creamy but it’s just as thin as the Olaszrizling. Less acidity here but better rounded.

Score: 3+ points

Chardonnay 2008 is bright with medium-deep yellow tone. More closed on the nose, fairly fruity but this one’s also very thin-bodied, although well balanced but it’s a wine without character.

Score: 3+ points

You’ll find informative pictures on the website of the winery: pantlikapinceszet.hu

A few years ago, don’t remember exactly when, I’d been browsing the internet for Hungarian country accommodation in a castle or as they’re called in Hungarian, “Kúria” which is a small castle in the country usually dating back to the 19th century or before. There aren’t too many I must say and my search was narrowed to exclude otherwise very trendy wellness hotels which I never felt attracted to. I found a recently refurbished nice, one storey Kastély near Szekszárd, which turned out to be in the middle of nowhere on the smaller hills west from Szekszárd. Based on their website and the pictures of the rooms, I expected a snobbish, overly touristic Kastély with posh guests and arrogant service staff. I couldn’t be more wrong: the house was ran by a friendly late middle aged couple, the service was very polite and friendly and apart from a group of retired people we were the only guests of the Kastélyszálló. The rooms are decorated in 18th and 19th century baroque style with nice replica furniture. The atmosphere is quite antique and the only problem was the thin doors and noisy corridors, hence lack of privacy. In the sunny October the Szekszárd hills were covered in all kinds of color and the whole area was extremely quiet. The staff was very nice, polite and helping but not pushy at all. They just hired a new winemaker who appeared in the middle of our wine tasting in the cellar around 11 pm but he was too busy working with the fresh material to join us for a conversation. It was quite convincing seeing him doing all the labor intensive work himself in the middle of the night. They just came up with a new sortiment, including the price prestige series which I liked very much, although I found them too pricey at that time.

So you might wonder why there isn’t any post entry on this blog about Szent Gaál wines. The only explanation I can think of seems quite stupid, that is because I didn’t want to destroy the very good memories with a corked wine or a faultless, but weaker wine I may have encountered. I was still a little bit concerned about it but I couldn’t resist the 50% off from the Cabernet Sauvignon Válogatás (Selection) 2006 (which itself further increased my concern). But 2006 couldn’t be wrong for Cabernet Sauvingon, I thought, it was a long, hot season so the CS grapes must have been mature enough to produce a great wine just like the ones I remembered.

The review

This Cabernet Sauvignon is deep purple with an almost black core. Very dense on the nose. The wine swirls beautifully in my  Bordeaux sized glass, releasing high concentration of berry fruit aromas, blackberry, sour cherry, chocolate and mostly dried plum elements with a hint of clove. And a little bit too much alcohol I must say.

The palate also has a dense, fruity character with an oaky accent. Full-bodied and well-balanced, although a bit alcoholic to some people. Very appealing texture with polished, powdery tannins which, unfortunately, will be too oily after 60-90 minutes. There’s a hint of nice, sour cherry core-like bitterness in the not so long finish. This wine’s in a good shape right now but it won’t age very well for too long.

Score: 6-

Price: HUF 3 400

This wine is fairly priced, just a bit above what I would feel really fair. But if we can believe what Szent Gaál are saying on their website, further price reduction can be underway. 

Domaine Gróf Zichy is one of two premium brands of Twickel Wine Estate of Szekszárd.

The base material of the wines consists of grapes grown on the best located vineyards and the low harvested quantity per hectare is coupled with intensive grape selection and delicate grape processing.

Still according to the winery’s website, wines are matured for a long time, using the highest quality wood and barrique barrels.

The wood barrel maturing of the wines lasts at least 12 months and maturing takes place in the best quality wood and barrique barrels. Maturing in the wood barrels is followed by an equally long period of bottled maturing period.

The review

Medium-deep purplish Merlot with a rich blackberry nose mingled with plum and high-toasted barrel notes. Appealing palate of young and fresh acidity with just a hint of bitterness which leads to a short finish. There’s substance here with blackberry and plum mainly, relatively well integrated into a medium body. Nicely textured with soft but not too ripe tannins. Good balance with just a tiny alcohol at the end. Not a complex wine but a pleasant drink. And this wine will age well for another 2-3 years, so this is a potentially 6 points wine.

Score: 5, 5+

Price: HUF 2 300 – 2 700

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

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

Maybe Szekszárdwill be the region producing the most new world kind of Cabernet Sauvignons and red wines in general in Hungary. Maybe people will like it but one thing is certain: Hungary’s consumers and wineries have been so far resisting to the trends and to styles coming from overseas shaping the world’s wine taste. Maybe these wines will not provide Szekszárd the competitive edge but neither did Kadarka. So why not give it a try. Konyári did. Others did too, Eszterbauer is actually more Californian now than Hungarian as long as his style is concerned. But instead of further generalizing let’s get to the short review of Konyári’s Cabernet Sauvignon 2006.

The review

Medium deep ruby color with black beet reflections. The wine has a quick move in the glass.

The nose is not intense and not as rich in fruit as I expected. But it has a cherry aroma in it and a very new world-y vinious character. On the palate this medium-bodied wine has medium acidity with a sloe fruit element and little else. It’s young, fresh tannins are pleasant though. The wine, however, is “empty”. It’s enjoyable but without any rich aromas of fruit, minerality, leather or whatever you’d expect from a Cabernet Sauvignon. It’s balanced, has a thin but good structure, it’s good to drink and it’s relatively fairly priced.

Score: 4-

Price: HUF 1 500

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.

Most people believe that this award is too political. Several winemakers I spoke to think the same. My personal opinion is that it may be political but many of the winners have, at some point in their careers, deserved the title, for different reasons. Just take a look at the list:

1991 Tiffán Ede,1992 Báthori Tibor,1993 Vesztergombi Ferenc,1994 Gere Attila,1995 Thummerer Vilmos,1996 Polgár Zoltán,1997 Bock József, 1998 Gál Tibor,1999 Kamocsay Ákos,2000 Figula Mihály,2001 Szepsy István,2002 Malya Ernő,2003 Árvay János,2004 Takler Ferenc,2005 Vincze Béla,2006 Garamvári Vencel,2007 Frittmann János.

Did yo notice how every major region has a man of the year yet? And buy the way, not a single women.

You know, 2 Hungarians, 3 opinions. So don’t expect that Hungarians would agree with the list above. Anyway, we should at least challenge the judges of the “Hungarian Wine Academy”, won’t we?

I picked a mid-range red wine from a good vintage,  and this is what I found.

The review

Konyári – Loliense, 2006

Beautiful, lively deep ruby – cherry color. It has a move of a full-bodied wine but not oily.

The nose is perfectly ripe sour cherry and a little chocolate with a cherry accent, and a mineral undertone.

It’s tannins are still edgy but rather elegant, not the brutal harsh tannins which are often found in this segment. But there’s lot of it due to the Cabernet Sauvignon probably (and to 15 months in oak), although the wine as a whole has a rather Cabernet Franc-ish character, or at least, to a larger extent than the actual CF part would suggest (20%).

Unfortunately the fruity notes of the nose are almost absent on the palate and with time they almost completely disappear. But the wine has a nice body with good structure and nice texture, supported by sufficient acidity. The tannin backbone provides a stability that allows the wine to evolve over a couple of hours and further until the next day. Well balanced and it’s 13.5% alcohol passes unnoticed.

It’s an overall good wine, but for HUF 4 500 you can find better.

Score: 6- (/10)

Price: HUF 4 500 (EUR appr. 18)

I stopped buying Teleki wines before they existed. I was guided through Kopár dülő by Attila Gere in 2001 and on our way uphill to where his best Cabernet Franc, Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon were grown before eventually fulfilling their destiny in the prestige cuvée Kopár, we passed by delapidated plots where grasses grown almost as high as vines themselves. They made a sharp contrast to Gere’s new plantations put in rigorous order and apparently subject to regular manual maintenance. Those were the plots of Villány Borgazdaság, in their decline, the ancestor of Csányi Pincészet.

For sure, Mr. Csányi may have made it the most modern and best run winery of the country (he’s got the funds for it) but why would he do that? He can sell as much of his crap as he wants through the MOL gas  station shops all over the country, a sale channel many winemakers wouldn’t dare to dream of.

On the other hand, Csányi Pincészet has 340 hectars in total which is enormous with Hungarian standards, so he could afford to venture some money with not-so-mass market wines and I did, as a matter of fact, run into some robust Chateau Teleki wines which weren’t bad after all. But this is the first time I got into tasting the lower segment of the sortiment. I must admit that I got this bottle as a present of an OTP employee, although I’m not suspecting that she got (unlike the UPC employees) this particular wine as a gift from OTP.

The review

Csányi Pincészet, Teleki, Villányi Cabernet Sauvignon, 2006

Deep ruby color and a medium lively move, indicating medium body.

The nose is, I regret to say, very common new mass wine of the new world type. There’s no simplest way to put it and I’m not a sophisticated writer. It’s not unpleasant, it’s just extremely undistinguished. It carries some cherry- and plum-jam notes with a little bit of pepper, wood and alcohol.

On the palate the evidences of ripe vine harvest are clear. High concentration of extracts, syrup-like consistency and tannins so plished that they’re actually almost totally eliminated from the formula. Very new world-y. The medium body doesn’t get support of acidity.

I think that 2006 was a suitable year for these kinds of wines and I must admint that for as much as 1 300 forints you seldom can buy better red wines in Hungary.

Score: 4-

Price: HUF 1 300

I know that I’m gonna regret this post, sooner or later.

I always wondered how could possibly professional wine writers/critics/bloggers stay objective without being biased by their personal taste. As one can’t like the Sex Pistols and Mozart the same way, I can’t imagine how anyone could fall in love with a Sauvignon Blanc and a Chardonnay, in the same time. I must admit that Grüner Veltliner has always been my Mozart and I kept underscoring Grüner Veltliner wines until I realized that I’d been always searching something else in it whilst I didn’t appreciate its strengths. Well, at least not appreciating enough. And I’m afraid I still don’t but by now I’m at least confident enough to write and publish my notes and thoughts about Grüner Veltliner. About the choice, I got the Monarchia Grüner Veltliner from a UPC employee, apparently less fun of wines than myself (UPC employees get Monarchia wines as Xmas gift on a regular basis, since UPC central Europe’s executive actually owns Monarchia winery) and I bought the Domane Wachau Grüner Veltliner Smaragd when I was in Wien chasing some good Wachau Rieslings and other stuff from that corner of the Danube. So here’s my finding.

Monarchia – Grüner Veltliner, 2006

As you would expect, I almost thrown out the whole bottle after the first sip, yep the old reflexes had been working  yet.

Rather deep golden color. I sensed mostly sulphites on the nose with some elusive unpleasant undertone. On the palate apple note is fighting the sulphites’ heavy cavalry, or something alike, supported by an unpleasant bitterness. I would not venture to call it acidity although the wine’s structure’s not as bad as it seems. And it has a body. It1s just that the body is very ugly to my taste.

Score: 3+

Price: about HUF 1 500

Domane Wachau – Grüner Veltliner, Achleiten, Smaragd, 2006

Pale, shiny golden color with zillions of tiny bubbles. The wine has a very pleasant nose, although difficult to describe. Vinious and resembles most the Hungarian Traubi soda with early spring floral undertones and at some point, stick of celery. Not overly intense and light bouquet.

On the palate the same vinious-Traubi soda elements play a key role besides the long bitterness. The typical Grüner Veltliner character is made more pleasant by its elegance, compared to the Monarchia wine. I like especially the start, but then this character with its gooseberry aroma isn’t convincing enough for me.

The most positive about the wine is the structure. This, and its elegance make it more attractive to me than Monarchia’s Grüner Veltliner from 2006.

Score: 5

Price: EUR 16

I know that one day I’ll become a fan of Grüner veltliner. But not just yet.