Budapest Daily Review

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 returned two st. Andrea Pinot Noirs in a row to the retailer because they were corked. The third one I took home was a Pinot from another vinyard, namely from Hangács of Demjén. I’ve never been there and I didn’t even know the place existed (I still doubt it a bit).

It turns out that St. Andrea Pinot Noirs are intentionally corked, or so they seem (leasson learned, Ráspi). But the shop clerk says it’s normal, a buyer brought back a lot of six bottles, all corked. I couldn’t believe my ears.

Anyway, this one from Hangács is suspiciously similar to the other two. First, it has the same blurred pinkish brick color, then it has the same bouquet (and that’s not exactly a compliment). Well the cinnamon, rose and woodchip aromas are not exactly repelling but they’re not huge either. The palate is embarrassingly desintegrated, with harsh components, firm tannic backbone and a hint of (positively) sweet compote element. I hoped it’d get better with time but it got worse.

Score: 4+

I’ve been going through a series of bad luck as long as wine picking is concerned. I preferred not to share the tasting notes about these wines and some of them weren’t even worth to take notes of. I expected more from St. Andrea Merengő 2006 for instance. It’s a good wine but hardly as legendary as some people like to see it  (I loved it’s texture though). St. Andrea Akutyafájást 2008 (white) underperformed too but it may well have been the fault of the bottle. Kreinbacher’s sparkling Syrah Rosé 2008 was our first breakfast sparkling wine celebrating the new year and although its colour and it’s bubbles are beautiful and it’s so dry as it can possible get, it’s short of similarly positive further elements except the strawberry aromas on the nose (still, my wife loved it so you may as well). Sauska’s Pinot Noir 2007 has got a stunning nose but the palate’s disappointing, or maybe our food pairing wasn’t optimal. Although I had a Légli Sauvignon Blanc in a restaurant which I liked but it doesn’t count so I bought a bottle, still waiting to be opend. And then came Gróf Buttler’s Pinot Noir Selection form Szarkás dűlő.

Szarkás’ 14 hectares alrealy pleased me with some of the best Syrah, Kadarka, Merlot and even Kékoportó and Kadarka this country’s ever seen. This means I had some preconcepts about the style I might expect and it couldn’t be wrong.

Blurred pigeon ruby color with a pink rim. The nose is fairly complex and unpredictably so, once with sour cherry and red currant then full of spices.

On the palate very ripe, almost jammy strawberry mingled with cocktail cherry and warm indian spices. Very little, very subtle acidity, some powdery, soft, velvety tanninc underpinning granting little structure. Later leather takes over the lead and at this point on the nose too. Further on dry, southern Spanish cherry aroma.

The bottle recommends serving it at 14-15 degrees celsius but I enjoyed the wine most at around 20, much more than when it was cooler. It drinks well (and quickly) in a winter evening and it’s affordable too. If you don’t like Pinot Noir grape then don’t start with this wine, but it’s an interesting wine for the fans of both Pinot and Buttler.

Score: 6 points

Price: HUF 2 750

I now feel more comfortable buying Hungarian Pinot Noir, especially after the positive surprise of Gál Tibor’s from 2002, tasted recently.

This one’s a pigeon blood ruby Pinot from Pannonhalma. It has a creamy cherry compote nose with hints of raspberry.

Nicely composed palate, showing velvety tannins, elegantly styled, suppported by just enough, very subtle acidity. I miss fruitiness however, no extracts here. And it’s not exactly sweet but it feels like a dessert, yet, it’s empty. I’m not sure you think I now what I’m talking about. Very light, drinks fast. Later some oriental spices emerge. At some point the otherwise short length tastes hubba-bubba (candy), or tutti-frutti, later punch.

This wine doesn’t score high and it’s relatively expensive but it was a very pleasant one to drink.

Score: 5+

Price: HUF 3 500

I don’t even dare to translate the word “Bországgyűlés” for You, although the significant number of foreigners who visited the event despite the heavy rain which lasted almost the whole day would deserve a try. Anyway, it wasn’t a gathering of the nations’ parliamentary delegates of winemaking as the name would suggest, I was actually surprised by the small number of wineries present, but even more by their distribution within the festival area. Despite the intense grass and other natural smell coming from the surrounding park in the rain I tried to take tasting notes. My idea was that I would taste and review the winners of the VIIth Pannon Bormustra contest. Unfortunately very few of the winners actually exhibited at the Festival so I’ll indicate in the table below those who won the “Top Wine” awarded by a jury consisting of international experts like Dante Brancaleoni and winemakers like René Rostaing as well as Hungarian wine drinkers or so called experts. As always, please read the following report as a rough guide only, since I hardly ever spit during a wine tasting (unless the wine is really rubbish) and the local food selection has also provided a strong smelly background which certainly distorted the senses. So here’s a quick snapshot from the Festival, without any in-depth analysis.

Here’s a photo from the venue of one of Budapest’s most important wine festivals.

Drinking a lot of wine has never been a problem to me. So starting up a collection, however, had to be a decision rather than just a necessity (of storing what I could not drink). First I stopped buying wines for a while when I realized the impact of warmth to wines in the house. Then I slowed down again when I realized that my 6-7 years old items stopped improving, in fact most of them started a process of disintegration as I call it, or blowing up into pieces. I am more careful now, although I still don’t have the rule or right formula to pick the ones that will improve over time and which can and worth to be matured in my dad’s cellar for 5-10-15 years (the Hungarian versions of Parkers and alike can help sometimes though). Since this is still more or less a lottery, I decided to share my experiences with You in order that You avoid the same mistakes, or follow my occasional good decisions so You can enjoy these aged treasures as well. My advices will be useful, believe me, since most of Hungarian wine makers tend to produce unequal quality year-by-year, unlike many of the industrialized counterparts in the new world and in western Europe. Even the tricky old names can surprise you with their experimentalism, and not in a good way.

I feel sometimes desperate when I descend to the cellar and I must pick the items for that week (I usually visit the cellar 1x or max 2x a month) and I was particularly concerned about the Vylyan Pinot Noir 2003. First, Pinot Noir is a very difficult task to accomplish, but apparently Hunagarians proved to be extremely adventurous in the new millenium. The thing is, I’ve never found a nice Pinot Noir in Hungary. And Villány, with its Mediterranean micro-climate was not very promising either (Vylyan planted the pinots to the cooler western slopes though). And this is exactly what I really enjoy, opening up a bottle in a typically awful monday evening with a sound pre-concept and then…It’s not so bad after all, even just after opening the bottle, it is quite promising, despite the blurred color which indicates the age (and wines from the 90s always make me suspicious). Blueberry is the word I am looking for and the finish is first quick, smooth, almost velvet, and a silent, long velvet ending will last until the next sip. 3 hours later slight improvement in (already surprisingly good) texture, but no perfum as you would expect only some cinnamon. But I like the finish very much.

The disappointment came when I checked one day later the price of it and its price tag above HUF 4000 (EUR 17) hardly qualifies it for best buy. It’s still a relatively fair price, but only just and only compared to other Hungarian Pinots.

Overall score: 5+/6- (appr. 83)