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.