IT AIN'T OVER TILL THE FAT LADY SINGS

In this instance I think ‘it ain’t over till the fat man sings’ is more appropriate.

As you know, ‘It ain’t over till the fat lady sings’ is attributed to a comment made by a sportscaster, Ralph Carpenter, during a close ball game in the mid 70’s.

It is an allusion to the final song in the last of Wagner’s Ring Operas.  The valkyrie Brunnhillde, usually a rather buxom and zaftig soprano, goes on for about 20 minutes in an aria.  At the end of the aria, it is all over for the Norse Gods and the curtain falls.  Forgive me, Wagner.

I started out my wine tasting trip with the goal of tasting 150-200 wines.  The final number is 138.  It is low in large part because when I did tastings in other countries, I usually got just a generous splash of wine in a glass.  Here you get a deciliter.  I have come to think of it as ‘deathaliter’.  My limit is six glasses at a sitting, which is more than three quarters of a bottle.  Actually, about glass number five, my nose starts getting fuzzy if I have consumed the wine at other than a leisurely pace.

I am spending my last four days here in Budapest.  I have brought with me four bottles of wine to consume: two Fekete Chardonnays, a Fekete Shiller, and finally a delicious Bock 2009 Royal Cuvee.  I distinctly remember tasting that last one.   The bouquet is delightful, and it has the feeling of liquid silk when it first hits the mouth.

I am going to the Central Market Hall to do my grocery shopping for my last meals here (other than a visit to Black Cab Burger for my hamburger fix).  My purchases include a little over a pound of goose foie gras, a 20 ounce T-bone steak, and a passel of fresh veggies.  I am then off to get my burger.

I choose the 10 ounce one loaded with toppings and an order of fries.  It is a struggle to finish the burger.  The fries are delicious, but I can’t finish them.

I go back to my apartment and take a nap.  The steak and foie gras spend the night together in the fridge.

The next afternoon I prepare the steak and top it with two generous pieces of seared foie gras.  Wine consumption begins in earnest.

Part of the evening is taken up with chewing pepto bismol tablets as the result of consuming too much rich food and wine.

The next morning I am confronted with most of the foie gras.  The answer is to prepare it in portions in a sous vide manner. I put individual portions in small cereal bowls and add a littler sugar water, as I have no sweet wine such as sauterne which you usually splash in the foie gras terrine.

It takes about an hour and a half on the stove top water bath for each of my three portions.  In the end I declare them quite satisfactory and eat two of them with veggies and wine. 

The next morning I make two enormous foie gras ‘sandwiches’ and pack them for my trip home.  FYI, USDA , I reached American soil sans foie gras.

Some end notes.  Budapest is a beautiful city filled with statues, cafes and the Danube.  It is definitely worth a visit.

Do not pay your sign painter in advance with your product.

You can gauge the price of your hotel room by what your fridge looks like.

And lastly, take my tasting notes only for what they are worth.  As I tell my friends when they ask me what they should drink, my answer is always the same - drink what pleases you.

On that note, it is interesting to see the divergence of views, even from the pros:

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/jun/23/wine-tasting-junk-science-analysis

WINE TASTING GARAYBPINCE - SZEKZARD

(132 wines tasted by the end of this blog)

I’m going back to Fekete to buy wines which I will take to Budapest to drink while waiting the last few days to finish my trip.  However, I am not going to climb two mountains to get there.  My trusty steed for the trip is a bicycle available here at the guesthaus.

I pedal to the road that turns off to go to his vineyard and have to dismount because it is so steep. 

As I push my bike up the road to Fekete I encounter some men crushing grapes.

 It is a steep road that winds its way up to Fekete.  However, I am rewarded by some nice views as I make my way upward.

Finally, huffing and puffing, I push the bicycle into the Fekete courtyard.  Two bottles of Chardonnay and one Shiller later nestled safely in the front basket on the bike I head back down the mountain.  After a couple hundred feet I have to dismount.  The grade is so steep that with the brakes fully applied and the wheels locked, the bike continues to skid down the road.  Back on the town road I pedal home uneventfully.

My wine supply now totals four bottles including the one I was given at the Bock Ermitage.  I will be luck to finish them all before I head home.

That afternoon I walk downtown to Garay Pince for my final wine tasting in Szekzard.  

I start out with a couple of whites – a sauvignon blanc and then a risling.

For my third I was curious about one on the tasting menu I had never heard of called Fuxli. The waiter went to his computer and translated the word for me.  It means fox.  He pointed to the reverse label on the bottle which listed about  8 or so vineyards.  I think he meant that only these vineyards produced the wine.  It tasted like an amped up rose, in other words a shiller.

Later I found out that these Szekzard wineries are trying to bring back a centuries old tradition of drinking a shiller that was called fuxli.  In Zekzard, as in Eger for bull’s blood, there is a prescribed amount of certain wines that must make up the blend.  It seems to me a marketing ploy to sell wine.

I then asked the waiter which of two merlots I should try.  He pointed to another wine on the list and proceeded to pour it.  I was amazed.  It was only a 2015 vintage but had both a lovely bouquet and flavor.  How could they get so much in a bottle with only a year old wine?  The wine was 2015 Bio Kadarka.  It deserves a picture by itself.

After that I asked the waiter to choose the two remaining wines for tasting. 

They are shown below.

 Each wine I  tasted was a deciliter.  That means slightly over three quarters of a bottle of wine consumed in a rather short period.  I sought food across the street which turned out to be a coffee house. 

 The pastry soaked some of the alcohol and as I made my way back up to the guesthaus I spied a restaurant called Bella Napoli which is in the corner of a courtyard of a four star hotel.  I walk in sit down and order soup.  Out it came and I asked the waiter for bread.  He says two minutes (in German) and zwei or drei minutes later out came a rather flat focaccia which had been topped with finely chopped rosemary and sea salt, and heated in the oven.  This is definitely one you should try at home.

My tasting notes are below:

Twickel

Kajmad

Sauvignon blanc 2015

Bouquet elderflower young Sauvignon 

Slightly tart finish

Refreshing a bit big on the grape

Olasrisling 2012

Markvart Janos

Lovely bouquet shares some notes with a Chardonnay

Light honey color

Flavor is full body Riesling

Fruity and a bit like a Chardonnay 

Sweet peach lingering on the palate.

This is a very nice white wine!

Heimann fuxli 2015

Full bodies fresh tasting shiller. 

Blend of Kadarka and Kekfrankos 

Full bodied rose colored wine with good structure.  A rose on steroids.  Would be excellent with pork.

Bio Kadarka 2015

Illyes kuria

Awesome bouquet

Light cherry, oak, 

The flavor is simply sublime

How do the get such a wonderful aroma and flavor in a young wine?

Posta Borhaz 2012

Kekfrankos 

Fruity flavor fading to dry just a touch of tannin

A marvelous example of a wine made from Kekfrankos.  Great with a steak!

This is a very fine wine

Bouquet somewhere between a Cabernet and rijoa.

Last wine 

Vida

Bikaver 2013

Blend of four wines

Kekfrankos is the base followed by merlot, Cabernet franc and Kadarka 

Bouquet deep fruits of the forest

Flavor goes dry very quickly

A flavor I do not recognize before it becomes quickly dry 

FEKETE VINEYARDS IN SZEKZARD

A 50 minute train ride from Villany to Pecs, a bus out of Pecs, and an hour and a half later I am in Szekzard, one of the notable wine regions of Hungary.  I use my ‘new’ app, called ‘maps.me,’ for directions to my lodging, a little over a mile away.  No problem.  The route starts out flat, and then the gradient proceeds to steepen - a lot.  No choice but to continue onward, toting my Rick Steve’s soft luggage with back straps and my Champion backpack.

By the time I reach the Koroza Guesthouse, I am bushed.  But wait.  The door is locked.  A sign in several languages is affixed to the door.  The English portion reads ‘if you are not here call this phone number'.  That sign tells me two things.  It is likely that the owner’s English is practically nonexistent, and, I am screwed since I need Wi-Fi to make a call.  However, I find myself smiling at the sign's wording and thinking about the sound of one hand clapping.

I sit on the steps and wait half an hour.  No one shows up.  A car pulls up to the curb.  It turns out to be the neighbor across the street.  I ask her if she will call.  She calls - her husband - who comes over and makes the call.  He tells me it is not the first time this has happened.

The landlady shows up 15 minutes later.  It is not uncommon for folks here not to know English, and she is one of those folks.  She explains about the room, the kitchen, etc. very nicely, in Hungarian.  I nod.  Thankfully, from having stayed in upwards of a dozen places by now, I get the gist of what she is saying.  I pay, she bids me good day after giving me a map of the area and the Wi-Fi code, and leaves.

It is late afternoon by now and time to go to a small grocery to stock a few supplies, then head to a nearby restaurant for dinner.

On the way I see two people making wine.  One is pressing grapes in a cellar that is open to the street.  The other has a portable augur on a trailer hitch and is feeding risling grapes into it out of the back of his station wagon.  I ask what grape the two fellows in the cellar are pressing.  No English, but it does get me a glass of red wine.  Nice, light and fruity.  Makes me think it is PortaGeza.

Here is a picture of the grape vines piled up against the building where they were running the risling through the portable augur.

 The next day it was off to Fekete vineyards to taste their wine.  Again maps.me showed me the way – which turned out to be up and down two mountains.  If I were to suggest one improvement to the app it would be to give a poor unsuspecting soul an idea of the elevations to be traversed using their recommended route.  This is just one of the climbs up the first mountain on the way to the vineyard.

A reward for my huffing and puffing up to what was no doubt the highest pinnacle in the area was a of a sculpture of grape vines, leaves and clusters, and view over the city.

Finally half way down the second mountain I reached the winery. I was met by the wife who spoke no English.  After a minute of miscommunication she summoned her husband who was also ‘Englishless’’.  I used my trusty Google translator to explain that I wanted to taste their wines starting with their Cabernet Sauvigon Selection 2011 that won a gold medal in the 2014 Challenge du vin held in Bordeaux, France.

Out came a new bottle which he uncorked and poured.  I should have let it sit for a while before tasting to get the full benefit of bouquet and flavor.  However a sip out of the glass a minute or two after it was poured revealed a lovely slightly dry Cabernet. 

Then came other award winning wines, a rose which is on the wine list of one of the Budapest Michelin starred restaurants.  As delightful as a rose could be.  Then came a shiller which is a relative of a rose but the skins are left in longer and the wine develops a red color between a rose and full red wine.

There was a show stopping 2009 Chardonnay done in oak.

Somewhere during the tasting he got up from the table and made a phone call.  A young lad and his father subsequently drove up.  The young man in his teens spoke English.  Conversation through interpretation flowed smoothly after that.

After tasting a several more wines I said I would come back the next day to purchase some.  I tried to pay for the tasting but he would not accept any money.

Here are some tasting notes and more photos.

Fekete winery 

Cabernet Sauvignon 

2014 challenge international

France gold medal

Light bouquet

Slightly dry and claret- like

2015 rose

Cuvee

70% blue Frankish

30% !???

Light bouquet

Refreshing

Faintly tart

Delicious

Schiller Kadarka 2014

Dark rose 

The best Kadarka  Schiller I have drunk on my trip. 

Chardonnay 2014

In oak

Mild oak bouquet 

Delicious wine

White Kadarka

(made from a red grape, but the skins do not come in contact with the grape juice)

Clear white wine 

Delicious flavor

Kadarka 2011

Ripe berry bouquet

Very dry red wine 

The young fellow who spoke English told me to go a much better way back.  It involved a ten minute walk down a steep road to an intersection with a bus stop.

Here is the reward for my hard day's labor:

BOCK ROCKS!

It is time to have a farewell dinner at Bock Ermitage and start to pack my bags for a trip to Szekzard tomorrow.

I confess to becoming an addict.  I am ‘addicted’ to foie gras.  My apologies to any animal rights activists who are reading my blog. 

As I recall, my first exposure to foie gras was in Vientiane, Cambodia while I was attempting to eat my way through their top ten restaurants.  Now here I sit in Hungary which is the second largest (behind France) producer of foie gras.  

There are humane ways to produce foie gras.  There is a Spanish producer, who makes a delicious product without force feeding simply by putting out lots of figs, acorns, beans and olives for their geese to eat in fall.  So how good is the product?  Good enough to win a blind foie gras taste test in France no less.

Now here is something the French foie gras producer does not want you to know.

Hungary is the world's second-largest foie gras producer and the largest exporter.   Now guess the principal export market.  France, yes France is the principal market for Hungarian foie gras – mainly exported raw.  What happens to the foie gras when it lands in France? French food companies spice, process, and cook the foie gras so it can be sold as a French product in its domestic and export markets.

Why all the time spent on foie gras?  That was my appetizer for my last night at the Ermitage.  Soft, creamy, and succulent – the best I have eaten thus far in Hungary - served in its own solid fat which makes an ethereal spread on bread.  It  was served with a glass of fresh white Harselevelu.

Next came six loin lamb chops with vegetables served with a glass of hearty red wine.

Dessert was the most interesting apple tart I have ever eaten.  The apple and custard filled tart had no sugar.  The sweetness came from two sources.  One was the sweet almond and vanilla cream that was served with the tart.

The other source of sweetness came from the wine that was served with it.  It was a late harvest Harselevelu.  As you wine lovers know, late harvest means that the grapes are left on the vine until they begin to shrivel and develop higher sugar content.  This also produces a wine of darker color.

To show you that the Bock winery has a since of humor, the red wine that came with the lamb was ‘Bock and Roll’.  The late harvest Harselevelu was named “Bock’s Gold’.

  

I collect aprons from around the planet.  I asked one of the assistant managers during my stay if it were possible to buy an apron the waiters wear.  At dinner that night he came to my table and handed me a bag.  He said he had my apron (which I would pay for) and also wanted to give me some other things.

I looked in the bag.  In addition to the apron there was a bottle of Bock Royal Cuvee, one of their premium wines, a Bock Tee shirt, and a bar of soap made from their 2013 PortaGeza.   Nice thoughtful folks.

I close my Bock stay with a photo I took looking out my bedroom window.

You can’t get much closer to production wine than this.

VILLANY TASTING AT THE SAUSKA WINERY

(117 wines tasted through the end of this post)

Villany is pronounced vee-lah-nee, with the accent on lah.  However you pronounce it, it is lovely.  I think it could be transported to a rural French countryside and fit right in with its neighboring villages.  One bank.  One grocery store.  What seems like fifty or more small wine ‘pinces’ lined up on either side of part of the main thoroughfare. 

Even the plantings in the village suggest France.  Look at the lavender and rosemary.

My last day here is devoted to two things.  One is a trip to the Sauska winery for a tasting.  The other is to eat an outrageously delicious last meal at the Bock Ermitage.  The reason I have picked out Sauska is that their wines are featured prominently on the wine list of two of the Michelin starred restaurants in Budapest.

The Sauska winery is situated about a half mile outside the village proper.  It is a walk of a little over a mile from my hotel. (I wish I had packed a pedometer for this trip.) As I leave the village, the scenery becomes one of vineyards on my right.  I walk past Gere winery, well known in the region.  

Next come the Sauska vineyards.   Their grape vines are planted to within several feet of the sidewalk.

As I walk onto the Sauska property, I see an automatic grape picking machine being washed down.  These machines were getting popular in Argentina at the end of our vineyard ownership there.  Labor was becoming a real issue, especially the part about agreeing on a price for picking.  The foreman would show up with a busload of pickers and then proceed to re-negotiate the formerly agreed upon price.  Not much fun.

I walked up a flight of stairs and onto the tasting terrace where I was met by Christian Csermak.  I had emailed Christian the previous day requesting a tasting.  Fortunately he spoke English well.  The terrace sits on top of a portion of the winery’s building off to one side.  It affords a marvelous view of the surrounding vineyards.  The sky was filled with puffy clouds against a robin’s egg blue sky.  An intermittent breeze imparted a chill to the air whenever the sun hid behind a cloud.

Christain and I began with a discussion of viniculture in Hungary and the flavors of wine from different regions.  He gave me a moment to look over the extensive tasting menu, and we started with a rose.

Villany rose 2015

This is one of the wines on Onyx’s wine list (a restaurant in Budapest with a Michelin star).

The wine is a blend of six varietals -  Kekfrankos,  Merlot. Cabernet franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah, and Pinot noir.  It boasts a lovely color and a light fresh fruit flavor.

I like chardonnay’s, especially oaked ones.  That was the second wine to taste.

Chardonnay 2009

This wine came with an interesting explanation.  In 2009 most of the oak in this winery was new, and wineries were experimenting with how much time to leave the wine in oak.  It was also when Sauska adopted the practice of chardonnay harvesting from California, where the chardonnay grapes were harvested at night for two reasons.  One was that the grape was at a much cooler temperature; the other had to do with the texture of the grape skin.

This chardonnay had little bouquet.  The flavor at the finish was one of strong toasted oak.

The next wine was a Siller.  This was a first for me (later to be repeated in Szekzard).  It is a ‘relative’ of a rose.  Aside from the flavor being a bit different from the rose, it is also darker in color which comes from the grape skins being left intact with the juice for a longer period than that of a rose.

This wine had a sour cherry bouquet and slight sour cherry flavor as well.  A very nice wine.

Next, I tasted a series of cuvees.  To refresh your memory, a cuvee here simply means a blend of wines.

Cuvee 11, 2012

Lovely Cabernet franc nose

Flavor of the Cabernet fading to dry 

Slightly resinous 

Cuvee 13

Lighter, fresher wine with more of the flavor of the grapes

Dry finish

Younger fresher wine, definite note of Syrah in the bouquet

Then came an interesting dilemma.  Taste the Cuvee 7 from the vineyards of the neighboring village, Siklos, or the Cuvee 7 from the vineyards of Villany?  The answer turned out to be simple.  Taste both.

Cuvee 7 Siklos

Merlot bouquet

Ascerbic, dry

Chewy

Cuvee 7 Villany

Dry, lightly medicinal

Not much flavor

Fades quickly

Dry finish

The final wine of the day was a merlot.  How many merlots are there matured in oak?  I can’t remember tasting one. (Perhaps my dear departed friend Ed, a merlot aficionado, would have tasted them.) This one spent a lot of time in oak barrels.

The bouquet said merlot.  The flavor said merlot.  And the finish yelled OAK!

I had arrived on Sauska’s tasting terrace a little after noon.  As I walked down the steps to head back to the hotel, I looked at my watch.  I had spent a little over four hours enjoying the wines, scenery, and knowledge I had gained from my discussions with Christian, who patiently explained each wine and responded to my many questions about viniculture in the Villany region.

I have taken up too much of your time already in this post.  I’ll cover my farewell dinner at the Bock Ermitage Hotel in my next post.

MORE VILLANY WINE TASTING

Bock Hotel Second Night Tasting

Chardonnay 2013

Light chardonnay nose

Tart citrus 

Light acid 

Tart green apple

Fanni  Feher Gyongyozobor

Sparkling wine

Chardonnay 

Medium dry, nice clean taste 

Well balanced.

Marcel Pezsgo Champagne 2011

Traditional method

Half chardonnay half pinot with a dash of risling

Dry with a bit of the chardonnay flavor.

Kekfrankos Rose 2015

Bouquet:  rose hips

Taste: light kekfrankos grape

Flavor lingers in the mouth

A nice little wine to sip in the afternoon.  However, it becomes slightly acid towards the end of the glass.

Bock Syrah 2013

Light Syrah bouquet with a whiff of alcohol.  Very dry but there is a moment in tasting the wine where there is an intense not of the Syrah grape. 

Bock 2011 Cabernet Selection 

An understated bouquet.  A subtle cherry is there, but it is in harmony with the other elements of the aroma.  

Wine served cool - cellar temperature

Another intense flavored wine going quickly to dry.

Bock Cuvée 2012

60% cabernet sauvignon

30% cabernet franc

10% merlot

24 months in oak

Mr. Bock's favorite wine

Taste: heavy tannins and dry

Drank with my ???.  Still very tannic. 

Capella 2008

Cabernet franc 60%

Cabernet Sauvignon 30%

Merlot 10%

One of Bock's most expensive wines

Bouquet primarily cabernet franc

Intense flavors, then tannin, then dry, then flavors return for a bit.

Now for an enterprising winery that uses all of the grape.  The seeds are separated and dried.  They are pressed for oil or find their way onto plates to be drenched with grapeseed oil and used as a ‘dip’ for bread (which by the way is made with grapeseed oil).

Here is a photo of the seeds being dried.

Finally, a note about the restaurant.  The food is varied and delicious.  One day for lunch I ate their version of ‘pig trotters’.  It was done ‘ossobuco’ style, deep fried until the skin was extra crispy.  I ate this with a PortaGeza 2015.  The portuguiser grape is a very important varietal in Villany.  It ripens early and goes directly from fermentation vats to bottling.

It is Hungary’s answer to France’s Gamay Beaujolais Nouveau.  The wine made from the grape is light and fresh.  I have tasted Beaujolais Nouveau in years when it was little more than high octane alcohol and yeast.  This 2015 PortaGeza was a delightful example of a lovely tasting young wine.

A bit about the breakfast shown in the photos below.  You have to eat to keep up your strength for wine tasting.