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.

VILLANY WINE REGION

It is hard to believe that Villany, this small village of about 2,500 tucked away in the southwest corner of Hungary, is the epicenter of probably the most important of the 22 wine regions in Hungary.

There are so many wineries here you would think everyone is employed in one capacity or another in some phase of wine production.

After the Russians left in 1989-1990, several dedicated winemakers began to reclaim their vineyards and return the vines to the quality necessary to produce fine wines.  Prominent among them was Josef Bock.  Over the past couple of decades, the quality of his and other wines in the region has improved in stature, regularly garnering medals in national and international competition.

I am staying at the four star Bock Hotel Ermitage which adjoins the modern winery.  Here are a couple of photos that you will see if you visit the Bock Hotel web page.

(http://hotel.bock.hu/en/)

 I spent two nights in the hotel’s restaurant tasting Bock wines.  There are about 30 available for tasting.  I have only gone through about a dozen or so.  It seems that six or seven at a sitting is about my limit.  That adds up to about a bottle of wine.

I’ll include my tasting notes from the first night here.  In the next posting I’ll tell you about my second night’s tasting, the restaurant, and what the wineries here do with grape seeds.

Bock First Night Tasting

Harslevelu 2013

Bouquet: a slight whiff of linden leaf

Color: light honey

Taste: Several flavors, a little soil.  Slightly citrus, well rounded with only a slight hint of tannin and acidity.

Kekfrankos 2015

Wine served cool.  Needs to warm.  

Medium red color

Bouquet: cherries as the wine comes to temperature.  Also alcohol and the rawness of new wine.  Spicy but considerable tannin. Peppery.

Grape skins.  A little chewy.

Ermitage 2013

Blend of 7 wines

Bouquet: even cool it has a nice understated nose. Slight alcohol.

Taste: slight cherry, very dry and slightly tannic. I drank a bottle of 2012 in Gyor which was much better than the 2013.  However, given the vagaries of Mother Nature each year, that is understandable.  

Pinot Noir 2009

Not much bouquet

Definite chocolate flavor.  Montmorency cherry flavor.  A really good pinot noir.

Dry finish.

Royal Cuvée 2011

Even cool, the wine lives up to its name.  Royal! Such deep rich aromas!  

Cabernet merlot pinot blend

You only experience the rich flavors promised in the bouquet for an instant, and the wine quickly fades to dry.

Lovely flavors going quickly dry.  They go dry so quickly you have to chase after them to gain full enjoyment of the wine. The lovely flavors cannot be savored because they flee so quickly.  They are gone, and you are left with a dry sensation and wanting to recapture that fleeting gem of flavor.  Only one solution:  drink some more.

Bock Pince Villany Cabernet Franc 2011

Decanter award 95 points

Cabernet sauvignon is a cross between two varietals, cabernet franc being one of them.  Sauvignon blanc is the other.  In the United States, one seldom has the opportunity to experience a 100% cabernet franc, especially one in all of its glory. Enter stage right: Bock Pince Cabernet Franc 2011.

If you want to understand the cabernet franc's interrelationship with cabernet sauvignon, taste this wine.  You will gain insight into how the cabernet franc provides the underpinning for what we routinely take for granted in the cabernet sauvignon of today.

3 HOURS OF WINE TASTING AND LUNCH AT HALASI PINCE, VILLANY

It is one thirty in the afternoon.  I am ensconced in the subterranean cellar at Halasi Pince where the winery’s restaurant is located.

I have just finished tasting two wines upstairs in the tasting room.  Since I am having difficulty feeling my nose, I figure it would be a good time to eat some food.

My two wines were a Halasi Harslevelu 2011 and a Halasi Chardonnay 2009.  I have tasted both wines throughout Hungary.  The variation of flavors is interesting.  

Whereas most harslevelu wines are usually almost clear in color and have a light interesting flavor, this one was light amber in color, reminiscent of a Tokaj.  The flavor was sweet and could have easily been compared to a lighter Tokaj.  It reminds me of the saying ‘life is short eat dessert first.’  It is truly a tasty dessert wine. This sweet taste and color could have only been obtained by leaving the grapes on the vine till they began to shrivel.  This increased the sugar content.

The second wine was a 2009 Chardonnay in oak.  The year 2009 was the best Hungarian harvest in recent history.  This wine lived up to the reputation of the year. Light honey color.  Bouquet of white peach.  A delicate bouquet that a perfumery would love to be able to duplicate. 

Flavor of oaked Chardonnay grape, the wine slowly fades to dry.  However, the flavor of ripe peach lingers.

I asked the wine steward before I went downstairs to eat to choose between the two wines I was considering having with lunch. One was their gold medal 2012 winner cuvée.  The other was a 2009 cuvée.  Both were the same price - six dollars for a deciliter.  He recommended the 2009 cuvee.  Cuvee in Hungarian wine terms simply means a blend of varietals.

For lunch I put myself in the waiter’s hands, which I often do if the waiter is friendly.  He recommended his favorite soup and entree.

The soup came in a large soup plate, empty except for a small round of chicken livers perched atop chopped shallots.  The waiter then produced a porcelain tea or coffee pot, about a pint in volume, and proceeded to slowly pour a lightly spiced creamy tomato-based bisque into the plate.  The liquid slowly surrounded the livers and then submerged them.  What a presentation!  Had I known what was coming, I would certainly have videoed it.

Next came the entree on a plate at least sixteen inches square. It was a beef rib about two inches thick, roasted rare to perfection.  The plate decoration itself was a work of art.  I told the waiter that it should be hanging on the wall.  My photo does not do it justice.

Now for the wine.  The Halasi 2009 cuvee would hold its own easily with a fine Bordeaux.  The first sniff of the bouquet said to me this could be a fine example of one of Pommerol’s best years.  The harmonious blend of Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Cabernet Franc was exquisite.  Even the light reflecting off the surface of the wine said ‘fine French wine.’

The merlot bouquet was at its sophisticated best.  I will remember the depth of flavor and silky texture of this wine well into the future.  It was finely structured, not one rough edge.

I had read a TripAdvisor review of the restaurant before I went.  One reviewer had commented about the panna cotta.  She said that alone would be worth returning to Villany. 

A dollop of rich creamy yoghurt-based ice and another dollop of fume of mint adorned the top along with a few currants.  Beneath the ice cream and mint fume was a layer of dense raspberry coulis and beneath that was the panna cotta.  This one was a rich raspberry cream set with gelatin.

I am beginning to understand why that reviewer would return to Villany for one of these.

Lunch ex gratuity for the wines, entrée, and dessert totaled $40.  It’s one of the finest meals I can recall eating..

YOU GOTTA LOVE GYOR

(90 wines tasted thru the end of this post)

You name the tribe, culture, or army, and at one time or another it inhabited Gyor.  Since the 5^th century BC, this included the Celts, Roman merchants, and later the Roman army which gave up and left in the 4^th century because of constant attacks from tribal groups.

Next came the Slavs, Lombards, and Avars.  About the year 900, the Hungarians arrived. Things went swimmingly well until the Ottomans decided to invade Hungary.   As the Turkish army made its way to Gyor, the Hungarian commander decided there was no way to fend it off so he borrowed a page from a crafty government official in Sopron.  He burned the town down.  (Gyor, BTW, means burnt castle.)  Seems a little Draconian to me, but history is what it is.

The town was rebuilt and included another castle.  The Austro-Hungarian army whipped the Turks and sent them packing in 1598.  The Turks must have had a memory longer than an elephant’s, because in 1683 they came marching back only to be defeated in the battle of Vienna.  After that they went home and stayed there.

Napoleon’s army showed up in 1809 and defeated the Hungary/Austria army.  He ordered some of the castle walls to be blown up.  (I gather from the history of Sopron and Gyor that Hungary hasn’t had much luck with castles.)

After Nappy left, town officials figured a castle without walls wasn’t of much use, so they tore up the ramparts as well.  The town began to build out from there.

Gyor’s troubles were not over.  During the 1950’s and 1960’s, only big blocks of flats were built (by you know who), and the magnificent old buildings were left to fall into disrepair.  Finally, beginning in the 1970’s, many of the old buildings were restored, while those beyond repair were rebuilt.

Thank you, whoever you were, for the restoration and rebuilding.  If I thought Sopron was a lovely city, Gyor easily surpasses it.

I am here for the weekend only.  It is the harvest festival, and I am sitting practically at ground zero.  The music stage for jazz and Hungarian style music is only a four minute walk away.  The stage down by the Duna, which hosts a lot of folk dancing, is only about a ten minute walk.

The hot humid days of the past three weeks have given way to temperatures in the 70’s with low humidity.  A two hour Sunday afternoon stroll through the historic center city is just about enough to make the whole trip worthwhile.

Another reason for my good mood is my lodging for the weekend.  It is an entire apartment with twelve foot ceilings.  There is even a piano! Take a look at the photos below.

Now, follow me through the streets and take a look at some of the sights on my Sunday afternoon stroll.

By the way, one of those pieces of strudel followed me home.

Just look at the delicate artwork made from fresh flowers and dried leaves.

 

And for the last picture.  Hey honey I found a great fixer upper.  What do you think?

After my stroll, it was time to research on my netbook how to buy a train ticket from Gyor to Villany which is in southwest Hungary and probably the most important of the 22 wine regions.

After working that out I left my palatial digs to go to dinner at Matroz, TripAdvisor’s third ranked restaurant in Gyor.  While we are on TripAdvisor, I’ll tell you about my lunch yesterday. 

I ate lunch at La Mareda which is ranked number one on TripAdvisor.  Sadly, my chicken breast was dry.  The first wine, an Irsai  Oliver, had little bouquet and a tart finish.  The two glasses of Tamas Csillig left me with an acid stomach that lingered for two hours after lunch.  A twenty dollar lunch at the TripAdvisor number one rated restaurant:  who posted the reviews?  The waiters’ relatives?

Tonight at Matroz, it was not gourmet fare but very good.  I drank a deciliter of Pannonhalmi rose.  It was tasty, so I doubled the volume for my next glass.  The wine cost about a third per deciliter of what the acid bath at La Mareda cost.  Go figure.

Now for the wine surprise of the evening.  A number of fellow diners had two water glasses of what looked like white wine in front of them.  When it came time to pay my bill, I asked the waiter for a deciliter of the white wine many of the diners were drinking.  He explained that it was a wine spritzer.  I ordered a glass and found it very refreshing, much like a weak champagne, bubbles and all.