Following another pointless debate about József “Ráspi” Horváth as a person and his wines on a well-known Hungarian blog, I’ve decided to open a bottle of his wines to validate my notes that I took a few weeks ago when I visited his restaurant in Fertőrákos.

Mágus Cuvée is an above entry-level wine (price-wise) but not cheap at all. My perception is that Ráspi wine prices tend to correlate with the number of bottles left and to a much lesser extent with their quality. So this wine could be any good or bad, although the fact that many of his wines from 2006 have long sold out made me suspicious. Here I must criticize his practice of sometimes selling the whole lot to a single person or a small group of people and putting on general sale some less-fancied wine by these groups at a relatively high price. Still, he was complaining about the mortgages he took, claiming to be very poor for putting only 30 000 bottles on sale a year from 21 hectares which indicates a very high limitation indeed.

I put this wine in par with a Chianti Classico which has the same price and I had it just the day before.

The review

Ráspi – Mágus Cuvée, 2006

The bouquet has very rich aromas of elegant berry-fruit at opening. After only 30 minutes the nose will remain intense but full of paprika and a smoky element.

The wine feels much older on the palate with silky tannins and round acidity. You have to give it 2 hours and it will open more, with the nose full of smoke and a chalky character mingled with Asian spices and on the palate ripe cherry in a rather big body. It has a long, mineral finish with a slightly burning alcohol – but due to my high tolerance of it I’m not disturbed by it. And it still opens more, becoming more intense in all aspects. The spices, especially white pepper are surprisingly fresh. 2-3 hours after opening the bouquet is still powerful with fat, dark soil in the middle. It drinks well in large gulps with a very pleasant, mouth-filling minerality.

Score: 6 points

Price: HUF 2 860/ EUR 11

Lamole Di Lamole, Chianti Classico Riserva, 2004

I bought my frist bottle of Lamole di Lamole near Gaile in Chianti, in the picturesque hills at Lamole di Lamole. I was impressed by the fruits coming from the bottle then and now that the wine is available at a local merchants on sale, I decided to try to put the Ráspi cuvée against this Chianti Classico Riserva, for they now have practically the same price.

Cherry-ruby color with purplish, rosé rim. Intense fresh sour-cherry aromas at decanting. Later in the glass Asian spice-driven bouquet with turmeric, curry and chili oil. Later the spices mingle with fine tobacco.

On the palate crispy acidity and young, fresh, still nice tannins are providing the backbone for the medium body with a leather undertone.

The day after the tannins become smoother, the spices even more complex and the palate adding pure fine 95% chocolate and minerality.

Score: 5+/6- points

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.