Zöldveltelini isn’t one of my favorite varietals and as such seldom is poured with much expectations, or at all. Yet after Szabó Zoltán’s surprisingly good Merlot recently I thought why not give it a go when it only costs a thousand forints (well, that’s why, I know), but it proved money very well spent.

It has an unmistakable apple pie nose with a lemon balm edge, the pie made with cinnamon. Warm, sweet and well rounded. Apple juice flavored palate with lot of acidity, not in a crunchy way. Thin Zöldveltelini but filled with aroma. Later supported by a hint of saltyness. Very good wine for the price.

Score: 4+/5-

Price: HUF 1200

The name of the guy who invented time machine is Dr. Sándor Tóth, winemaker under the name Scheller and a long-time favorite of mine. It’s difficult to track his work over the years, although rumour has it that he’ll put on the market the wines of 2006 soon (what happened in between is up to you to find out). But his wines from 2003 are still fresh and lovable in spite of being light and not overly acidic, theoretically not exactly suitable for ageing for too long. They’re not in perfect shape any more (perhaps they’ve never been), but you like to think that once they were beautiful, maybe even gorgeous and they are still enjoyable, in some way, after so many years.

This Zöldveltelini from 2003 is pale golden yellow with a light brassy reflection at the edges. It has a creamy, maionnaise bouquet with a lemon zest accent. Creamy texture with a sparkling bitterness from the midpalate. It’s ample but with little substance. Soft acidity. Very empty finish. When chilled, it feels like a lollipop made of butter with a little bit of persley and sometimes other spices too. I finished off the bottle on the third day and it was still as good as 3 days before, and on the second day it turned out to be a great pair with a chicken curry, something unimaginable before. You may laugh now, but you should try it instead!

Score: 4 points (at least)

Price: HUF 1 500

Maybe apart from Mátyás Szőke, there has not been any reason why I should have gone to Mátraalja up til now. I ran into a chilly bottle in my oncle’s kitchen and I liked the simplistic, but not “oh so trendy” minimalist bottle label of a so far to me unknown (but not unheared) winemaker called Tamás Szecskő.

This was the beginning of a long evening so I did not plan to pay too much attention to this wine (there were better known aces to follow). Maybe because of the cool temperature (below 10 celsius) its smell seemed very modest, lucking the suspicious sweetness and I don’t like the overly spicy white wines anyway. It has a very light, transparent color and probably without any scientific explanation that usually indicates crispyness to me. And it was. Very well balanced, easy to drink cuvée made from Zöldveltelini and Chardonnay (from 2005). A combination I’ve never seen before by the way. I so regret that I did not buy more Zöldveltelini (Grüner Veltliner) on my last purchasing trip to Wein und Co few weeks ago where there’s still an ongoing major sell-off of these. It’s an extremely easy to drink wine and that’s a bit dangerous because it’s 14,5% alcool. We so quickly finished 2 bottles of them and without having my notebook with me that I can hardly write anything more. I only now that I will have to buy it somewhere which probably won’t be easy because of Zwack’s exclusivity and it’s wide unavailability. I don’t even know how much could it cost, I found the Királyleányka (rumoured to be also very good) below EUR 6 which would qualify this wine for a best buy too.

Score: 6

Price: (guess) EUR 6

Note: the photos is an illustration taken of the