Budapest Daily Review

This is my first Merlot from the  ”selection” range of this family run winery. I didn’t know what to expect, the cheap Halmosi wines were disappointing as red wines under HUF 2500 usually do. Not this one.

Tasting notes

Medium ruby with a pale brownish rim.

Warm, yet fresh and spicy nose with cinnamon and black pepper mingled with very (very) ripe wild berries. This jammy character is carried on through to the palate, I bet the Merlot grapes were extremely ripe and they yielded a very high concentration of flavors with a mix of wild berries. Linear path into the not too long  finish. Very subtle acidity, it’s there but hardly supports the pressure of the substance. Sweet mature tannins flow into a sweet ripe finish. Full-bodied wine, doesn’t excel with an individualistic style but it’s a very good (and affordable) entry to the league of big wines where it doesn’t belong yet.

The thing I appreciate the most in this price segment (HUF 2500 – 4000) is balance. I don’t necessarily expect individual style from these wines but I don’t tolerate faults like too high acidity, harsh tannins or lack of integration. This Merlot is simply error-free and even expresses some of the terroir.

Score: 6 points

Price: HUF 3200

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)

Clean, pale golden yellow hue. The nose is very aromatic juicy ripe apple. Ooops, this is a semi sweet wine, and excessively so! The same aroma plus some tropical notes of babana and papaya make a decent mouthfil but there’s too much residual sugar for too little, although polished acidity. There’s a hint of walnut tartness from the midpalate but not much else. A good pairing though is with a spicy scampi pappardelle.

Score: 5-

Price: HUF 1950

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

According to the merchant’s website, the grandson of those who bought this pice of land of Köveskál in 1945 took over the winery three years ago which means this might be his first tentative to produce a decent wine on the volcanic hills of northern Balaton. He managed to do it by blending Olaszrizling (2/3) and Riesling (1/3).

Not very intense rocky mineral smell. On the palate it looks older than it is and it’s not fresh either. Very subtle acidity except the finish where it finally shows lemon scented acidity. Good length, stretching throughout all the way in a linear manner.

I find this wine a little bit middle of the road. I’d reverse the proportions to give this wine a more distinct terroir edge and allow bigger body. But not a bad start.

Score: 4 points

Price: HUF 1 950

My records show that Eger is the best Pinot Noir producing region in Hungary. Some of the Egri Pinots even have great ageing potential.

This Tekenőháti from Noszvaj has an elegant, warm, fleshy bouquet with restrained spices. Elegantly styled on the palate, well-balanced with a long smooth finish. Soft, ultra-thin tannic backbone supporting a light-weighted body. The wine develops a very complex and exciting bouquet with notes of fat forest soil, hints of farmyard notes, with very elegantly rounded edges. Very subtle acidity. Lovely wine with at least another 2-3 years of potential. I wish I could see what this wine will become.

Score: 7, 7-

Price: HUF 4500

Another “artisan” wine from easily the most beautiful area of Balaton. 2.5 hectares on the southern slopes at 150 m altitude, covered by forest dark soil above the vulcanic sand known as Pannon sand is Péter Váli’s vinyard.

I chose an Olaszrizling with 13.5% alcohol (13% according to their website) because the mineral character which this wine I’d been expecting to have suits better full-bodied wines.

Lovely bright golden yellow hue. On the nose lime and greenish, firm, medium-ripe acidic green apple. On the palate, the formula is: lot of apple mingled with citrus aromas and minerality, inevitably. Later tons of celery, lovage and persil with hints of nettle, supported by lot of young acidity. The finish could be more polished. Rustic style.

Váli deserves more attention.

Score: 5- points

Price: HUF 2000 (cheaper directly from the producer)

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

I was contacted recently by someone not entirely unfamiliar with Hungarian wines asking about the Hungarian Syrahs and I had to admit that I found most efforts in this direction pretty forgottable, at least until I stopped sampling Hungarian Syrahs a few years ago. The only exceptions were the Syrahs of Gróf Buttler, which, vintage from vintage, convinced me about some potential.

This Syrah 2007 of Heimann family winery is less expensive. This is our first encounter.

Purplish hue with a pink rim.

Dark character on the nose, with veal steak, well done, mingled with caramel.

What first hit me concerning it’s very well composed palate was the great texture. Powdery, soft and ripe tannins which further smoothen into a long, straight finish accompanied by a berry fruit syrup element and a tobacco accent. Not very expressive wine fruit-wise. But from the mid palate fine dark chocolate flows into the eternity. And underneath it lies a great structure with firm, perfectly integrated acidity. Very solid chracter, structured style with probably the best tannin I’ve had this year.

Score: 6+/7-

Price: HUF 3 000

The unofficial release date of the wines of the latest vintage is Szt. Márton’s day (sorry but I get too bord thinking about googling out who the hell is Szt. Márton and what this day means), to me it used to mean trying not to get close to any wine shop for a few days. The thing is that these young wines have such a boring, aggresive markerting and I tend to avoid (very successfully I must say) ”must do-s” (like having the best time of my life at new year) and mass wine drinking anyway, so I’m the nightmare of Hungarian winemakers this time of the year. Comparing these wines to Beaujolais (nouveau) is another big mistake.  Moreover, by now you should have a decent stock of some red wines from 2006 so why would you rush to buy something that was a blurred, hardly drinkable non-alcoholic fluid couple of weeks ago? There’s no reason, unless you’re obsessed with pointing out exceptions. I found one which turned out not to be the rule, but the exception, quite unwillingly, circulating in one wine store searching for a wine at discounted price which somehow may have so far escaped my radar. Idei 2009 by Heimann is not a sale item but it is priced like one. So I said why not, I already fell for Szt. Márton’s mandatory goose meal (the leg!) the same day (I feel like I’m becoming a cliché).

The label says it’s a blend or Portugieser and Zweigelt. But the nose tells it otherwise, which is confirmed by the palate (what was already suggested by the color): this is a Zweigelt-based cuvéee whatever anyone says. Nice appearance, dark red/claret hue and a fresh, very jammy nose full of red currant aroma. Very fresh and young on the palate (who would have guessed…) with surprisingly many substance. Very tasty syrup of red currant and cranberry mostly. Vibrant, a bit harsh but not too much acidity. I’m not suggesting it will age well but it was still standing firm the next day. A very pleasant surprise overall and it does go well with a fat goose leg. This must be beginners’ luck, so I won’t push it.

Score: 4 points

Price: HUF 1  530