This is a wine from my preferred range: I don’t feel comfortable buying cheaper red wines (HUF 3300) but I can’t afford spending more on wine every time I feel like having a good red one (which is more often than I like to admit). So this better be good.

Heimann – Birtokbor, 2007

A blend of 50% Cabernet Franc, 35% Merlot and 15% Kékfrankos this wine has seen 18 months in used oak barrels.

Clean and vibrant medium ruby hue. The nose is a touch reduced showing sweet fruity with traces of wood. This wine smells of gage and plum with strawberry added to the fruit profile.

Elegantly styled palate with smooth acidity and finely composed structure with well handled, yet well defined tannins. Faded notes of clove and other spices also imply smart use of oak. Light but well balanced palate although some might find the 14.5% alcohol sweetness over the top. Open and accessible wine with a good length, but rather restrained in terms of aromas. Lovely texture.

I didn’t disappear for more than a week because I didn’t drink anything good but because I’ve been drinking too much lately. Mostly in public and mostly way too much and I don’t expect that December would be any better. But fortunately I still managed to spend some quality time alone with some lovely wines, like this one right now when I’m writing this post and will publish soon, although not the subject matter Olaszrizling from Csopat but that’ll be another post anyway.

I asked the winemaker which is the single best white wine he’d recommend me to take away and he picked this one without any hesitation. Although I heard winemakers from North-Balaton complain about 2007 I took it.  You may want to read about this visit and his Syrah 2006, and also about his artisanal ways here.

Tamás Pince – Olaszrizling, 2007

Mature, medium deep vibrant golden yellow. Very densely styled but fairly fresh nose, packed full of citrus fruits and mustard. It evolves into sweet citrus with a minerally uppertone. On the palate lively acidity carries a massive layer of minerality. Very much like Szabó Zoltán’s classic Rajnai Rizling except a fading tart finish and it’s a touch woody too. Very juicy with lemon zest and grapefuit flavoured acidity mingled with adorable salty minerality stretching into a long finish. It seems to develop a more moderately fresh, less acidic character with longer exposure to air.

Let’s start with a disclosure here. The Eszerbauers are making extra efforts at the winery’s tasting premises by personally entertaining even not exactly high-profile guests like myself but fail to find a merchant who could make their wines easily accessible in the capital of the country. So I was given this bottle by an ex-pat wine enthousiast and regular reader of this blog after he recomended me this wine but I couldn’t find it in any shop (virtual or brick and mortar). Thanks John V.!

Now, I kind of like Eszterbauer wines because i) of the stories they created around every single wine, ii)  they’re inexpensive and iii) they’re simple and straighforward wines with a recognisable character.

The review

Dark, clean bright claret with a cherry rim. Sweet blackberry with a lightly earhty accent on the nose. Very approachable wine with smoothly integrated, soft tannins, lovely texture and almost no acidity at all. Very gentle, rich, clean fruity palate flowing into a rather short length. A little bit sweet but not excessively and not because of the residual sugar I think but for the high alcohol (15.5% – the grapes were harvested with an unusually high sugar content) but it doesn’t burn at least so I’m fine with it.

A middle of the road wine with a certain new world-y tone albeit quite unlike a Hungarian Cabernet Sauvignon. So it’s interesting.

This is just to let you know that there might be less and less bargains out there but I’ve found a rare good red wine under HUF 2000 which I now put on my watchlist. Although Szabó Zoltán’s Riesling 2007 was a bit disapointing after the breakthrough 2006, the Merlot 2007 is a very decent effort for the price and makes me wonder how the 2006 could have been.

I used this Merlot to make magrets of duck (following Larousse Gastronomique’s receipe, which is a wonderful book btw, sticking predictably to some of the clichés as long as Hungarian wines are concerned but fortunately weighting Hungarian wines properly by dedicating it no more than a few lines on its more than 1 2000 pages) and although I cleared two galsses of it in the process I cannot write a proper review just yet but I was impressed by the balance, the soft texture and the freshly intense fruityness (cherry) of such a thin wine. I don’t dare to make prediction for how long this wine may age well but it still certainly has a vibe that gives me hope I can still enjoy it in the near future again. And this may just as well be a new start for Pécs’s red wine evolution (Europe’s capital of culture, LOL).

Here’s a thing. I can’t think of a winery which never disappointed me once at least, but two. One of them is a so called artisan winemaker who is not supposed to over-engineer his wines, is he? Still, he seems to be able to come out with very good wines of a recognisable style I would associate more with smart use of technology. Another thing I can’t think of is a winemaker from Mátraalja who has ever pleased me with a red wine, but one. Anything in common in these two? Are you good at guessing? Can Szecskő save Mátraalja’s red wine making? Turán 2007 was an amazing effort. But he also made the first Királyleányka and a Chardonnay and Zöldveltelini cuvée I really enjoyed.

Let’s have a look at Rubintos 2007.

Medium ruby hue. Quite a restrained and light nose, little woody but then first spicy with clove and caraway seeds, later with wild strawberry. I thought I recognised Merlot and Zweigelt here.

Lovely structure, firm and grippy yet very elegant. The tannins do their job brilliantly. They make this wine crunchy, and I feel like eating a raised cake soaked with rum or indeed, punch. Complex but elegant mouthfil sometimes sweet with a minerally accent flowing into a lenghty strawberry finish. Relatively light wine.

This wine is so interesting it deserves some research and a dedicated post just for itself. I’m not capable of it of course, I’m just someone after all who has a keyboard (and a bottle) in the hands most of the time anyway allowing me to do simple things like writing few lines but man, this wine deserves some attention! Do you know at all what Rubintos grape is? Do you think I knew until now? Do you think I didn’t think it was the name of a cuvée?

Would you try to guess who are the parents of this grape? OK, try this: taste this wine (and don’t spit it for god’s sake!) and guess! Don’t google it or ask one of your geek friends. Try hard mate, harder than me, cause I’d never have guessed it. Not after drinking the whole bottle all by myself.

To answer the question in the introduction part: I have no doubt that he already has. Szecskő is Mátraalja’s best kept secret, full stop. Now it’s official.

Score: 6, 6+ (I found that the wine reaches its best within minutes after opening, starting to decline after bit more than an hour)

Price: HUF 3 300

If a winemakers has 8 hectares and almost no wines at all at the wine shops than it’s a bit unusual, to say the least. But the owner of a small (perhaps the smallest) wine store in Buda recommended this wine as something remarkable for HUF 2 400.

Dark purplish hue with a Turán-like dark core. The nose is sour cherry and wood. Too much acidity especially at the end where it feels way too sour to my taste. Very dry, small-medium bodied wine. Bitter, although soft tannins. 13.5% alcohol. Feels less.

Maybe I shoud have left it in a decanter for a few hours more.

Score: 3+

Price: HUF 2 400

Staring at Etyeki Kúria’s Magyar Vándor 2007 I’m thinking about how I tend to freak out when I see a red wine, especially for under HUF 4 000 from Mátraalja, Somló or sometimes even red areas. So imagine the flash when some kind of positive surprise hits you in this condition. Take this wine for instance, it didn’t only take tartness out of the equation but added minerality to it. Now you’re talking!

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

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

It’s winter seasonal wine sale time, it’s time to try things you otherwise wouldn’t buy.

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

Lovely nose, very attractive indeed and fairly complex too. Very fresh, with dry cut grass, thyme but mainly rosemary mingled with fresh nettle tea. It doesn’t stop there, releasing citrus notes with a perfum-y character adding a ripe apple accent. Well integrated, vibrant acidity and a juicy character on the palate with a salty, chalky mineral undertone. There’s a hint of bitterness from the mid-palate but that’s alright. Lower-medium body, good length, drinks very well and quickly and it’s almost as good when it warms up to room temperature as chilled.

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