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Tokaji | Eger part II

From one of the very fine and small vineyards of Eger, Orsolya, to one of the very big and hip ones, Bolyki. As in real life, bigger does not mean better, but it does not mean bad either. Wines from Orsolya were more exciting and individual whereas Bolyki wines were generally rounded, tasty but not really spectacular in any way. 

Tasting-notes (entirely subjective)

Orsolya pince

Rosé Merlot 2016

Typical Rosé, nice but nothing special

Rosé Sangiovese 2016

Very round, crisp fruit, not too bitter, quite round; nice and interesting Rosé

Abracadabra Cuvee 2016

Warm, light fruit, nutty. Tastes minerally, cool and dry fruit. Very nice for such a cuvee.

Furmint 2016

Smells perfumed and salty; Has a slight sweetness and a nice acidity, creamy and long. Very nice

Olaszrisling 2016

Very ripe fruit, apple-pie, creamy, relatively strong and ripe fruit, summer apple, salty at the end. Very nice.

Merlot 2014

[no notes] – but super fruity, with nice tannins and a balanced body – very good wine, unfortunately sold out.

 Bolyki Pince

Bikaver 2013

Warm smell, slightly sherry-like; Taste: cool but balanced fruit. Decent Bikaver, but nothing special

Bikaver superior

Smell: Slightly peppery, full fruit; Cherry on full forces, good tight body, balanced, overall nice but not too exciting.

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Tokaji | Eger part I

This is the first of a two-part series on a brief wine trip between Tokay and Eger. Both are among the best-known wine-regions in Hungary and both have their own and unique history, none of which can be adequately covered here. Tokay may be among some of the most renown wine-regions in the world. In the 18th and 19th century it produced the most craved after sweet wine for Europe’s aristocracy. These sweet ‘Aszu’ wines are made possible by the specific climate in Tokay through its warm weather and two rivers, producing a sought-after mould, which dries out the grapes without producing vinegar. As pricey sweet wines become more out of fashion, Tokay is increasingly specializing in dry wines of which it can produce superior vintages in good years. The problem is that the mould becomes a problem when you want to produce dry wines. In good sweet wine years, the grapes dry and the sugar content rises, making it difficult to harvest good ripe grapes that produce dry wines below 15 percent.

Also Eger has its story of transformation, although less recent. Historically it started as a white wine-region and was slowly transformed into a red-wine growing region as of the 17th and 18th century. Eger’s continued red push was to a considerable extent due to the myth of the Eger bull-blood. As it goes, when the Turks raided Hungary in the 16th century, they were intimidated by the red beards of their red-wine drinking Hungarians counterparts. Such folklore sells wine, and it did particularly well during communism, where everyone in Eastern Europe knew bulls blood and red wine was massively grown in Eger. After the wall came down, Eger was marketed as the Eastern European Burgundy, which worked all right. Yet the red wine focus is problematic in a region in which despite climate change, winters are relatively cold and summers warm but often slightly wet towards Autumn, making it much more favourable for growing white. Small, quality wine makers like Orsolya simply produce no red wines in some years as the quality of the grape does not live up to their standards if Autumn turns wet. Bigger wine makers, as the other ones sampled, cannot afford this.

This blog deals with the first day and 3 stages of our trip. At first, we visited a barrel maker in Tokay, producing Hungary barrels from Hungarian oak (Although the idea of Hungarian is stretched here, meaning pre-Trianon Hungary, including wood from territories which are now part of Romania and Slovakia.) Thereafter we sampled wines from one of Tokay’s biggest and most renown wine-makers Szepsy. At the end of that day we went to try wines from Gál Tibor, who was with Szepsy among Hungary’s wine pioneers in the early 90s, sadly died in a car-crash in South-Africa and who’s kids are now trying to push the company to a hip young and relatively large-scale producing kind.  

Below, please see my entirely unscientific tasting notes:

 Szepsy Tokay

2015 Birtok bor

Crisp, fruity, relatively light for a Tokay, slightly bitter at the end. Taste of fresh apricots, Mango, a little bit of barrel, a hint of mandarin, a slight bit of pepper at the end.

2010 Birtok bor

Warm smell, relatively recognisable acid for its age, timid fruit, slight wood, a hint of liquorish at the end. Simple but nice.

2015 Kiraly Harslevelü

Smells intensely perfumed, fresh wood and dried fruit, almonds, slightly salty at the end.

2015 Nyulászo cuvee

Restrained smell, like a mix of fresh Tabaco and gummi bears. Taste: slightly salty, wet wood, weeds, grapefruit, a little bit of salt and caramel at the end. Interesting, lots of flavour there, but quite strange.

2015 Uragya Furmint

Peppery at first. The taste only opens up slowly, fresh. Moves from subtle at first to dense and rich. Fresh Mango, pineapple, and again a nicely salty end. It has less wood then the others, nice.

2012 Szamorodni

Intense smell, like a freshly packed fruit-basket, with a hint of Hermés perfume. Tastes of acacia-honey, ripe mango, rich oranges and late summer peach. Really nice

6 put. Aszu (year not noted)

Full punch, ripe tropic fruits in an aged rum. Warm, milk chocolate, peach-pie, mandarin-desert and at the hand a big scoop salty caramel. Really, really, really nice.

 Gál Tibor

Egri Csillag, 2016

Smells of strawberry-punch, bubble-gum, fruity but quite artificial. Tastes crisp, grassy, slightly brash. OK as an everyday wine, but nothing more.

Vigonier 2015

Smell of fresh tobacco and lather. Tastes of warm plum, white pepper and wood. Nice.

Kékfrankos 2013

Smell: bitter chocolate, sour cherry, basil; Taste: like a big sip of Hungary sour-cherry-soup with a hint of white pepper. A hint of various herbs at the end. Good Kékfrankos.

Kadarka Selection 2013

Smell: sweet cherry liqueur; Taste: sweet with a hint of fruit, but no structure, no tannins, just sweetness without context; very strange

​

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SEEKING ARARAT

Impressions from Yerevan

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Impressions from Hiddensee

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Greetings from the CEU community.

Szabad ország, szabad egyetem

04.04.2017

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South-Budapest

Ferencváros/Csepel/Pesterzsébet

Impressions 

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Balaton

Due to a tough winter, lake Balaton has been frozen completely for the first time in 30 years. As it’s soon to be warmer we took the opportunity to hike not around, but on the lake and enjoy this most surreal spectacle. .

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SOFT ICE

Who doesn’t feel that we are living in a world which seems increasingly cold and blurry? Budapest feels just like that these days. Despite that, there is still beauty in the details.

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Transylvanian / Romanian wine

There is something strange about the world of wine these days. On the one hand, the perception of most wine drinkers in the West hasn’t change much over the past years. Good wine is assumed to come from Italy, France and Spain. There may be a recognition that in other parts of the world wine is produced, yet there is also the genuine idea these wines cannot be all that good or may not live up to the standards of the aforementioned countries. Yet in this day and age wine is produced nearly everywhere south of the subarctic region. There is Hungarian-, Czech- and Slovak wine. There is even Polish and British wine. There is also wine in Romania and here I am not talking about the warm black-sea south but the mild North-West of Transylvania, specifically a winery called Crama la Salina in the area of Turda, not far away from Cluj.

The winery started as an investment from several businessmen, aiming to satisfy the growing demand for more local wine in the area. Although the wine may be consumed and marketed more locally, its signature is clearly international. The winery does not use any Romanian grapes as Fetească  but choose to plant entirely international ones, easily recognizable around the world as Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc or Pinot Noir. The same goes for the taste. When drinking the wines I could not tell whether there is something particularly regional about those grapes. The Sauvignon tasted like a Sauvignon, with green grassy notes and its trademark flavour of ripe gooseberries. The Chardonnay was more intense with a slightly wooden note and a balanced lush and fruity aroma whereas the Riesling came out more on the citrussy end. You may think what you want about this, but I belief if you compare a normal French or Australian Chardonnay from a decent store in a similar price range to this one, you would hardly be able to tell the difference, or be able to tell which is from where. I belief this is a good thing. It shows that our understanding of the world of wine may in fact be a bit narrow. Wines from countries as Romania should be fairly compared next to their historically more praised French or Spanish peers. Of course, it would be nice to see this winery take a more distinct road in the future and develop its own expression. But it is young and producing good, clean and highly drinkable wines is certainly a good start.

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Wine part III: Selling wine

Autumn is not only harvesting- but also wine-festival season. Exactly at the time when the mood is the most tense, when you wake up every morning looking at weather forecasts and pray that it please wont rain, it is time to sell. This is also one of the most fun times when you get to meet so many different kinds of people and you get to talk about wine the most. Some like it, some don’t; but that’s all part of the game.

Now its November, the wine are in the cellar and the yeasts are doing their fair share of the workload. Yet in no time it will be late Summer / early Autumn  and the frenzy of harvesting - making - and selling wine will be back on again.

Cheers!

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Making wine.

Destemming - pressing - pressing - preeeeeeessing - and cleaning, lots and lots of cleaning.

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Wine part I: Harvest

This is the start of a 3 piece photo series on wine making. It covers only a couple of days in the year, yet some of the most intense. This post is on harvesting, the following two are on producing, at least the part from field to tank, and selling.

Wine making is still romanticised widely. For many of the bigger companies, not much of that romanticism holds. Their wine is an industrial mass-product, designed, treated and mixed to produce something that is reliable but little of what we may call natural. Producing wine at the scale of my parents (~1500 bottles) involves nearly by definition quite a bit more romanticism as well as idealism. Producing at that rate does not provide for much of a profit, definitely none one could life off. It still is year-around work. The field needs constant maintenance; from cutting, to fertilising, to plant protection. Producing demands patience. Hours are spent pressing grapes, often out in the cold. Every step demands meticulous cleanliness. One may say that wine-making is in fact roughly 80% cleaning and 20% making. Once the wine is in the bottle, you have to sell it. Retail or restaurants make little sense when you produce at this scale. A couple of Euros per bottle would mean a definite loss. So you go to wine-festivals, spent full days opening and closing bottles and selling wine. This may sound like a lot and it is. Wine-making involves quite a bit of stress.

So is it all worth it? Although I have not been fully involved in the whole cycle, the answer has to be yes. There is nothing more satisfying then producing your own product that has come about through a controlled yet still magical process. Every year you learn, you become more accustomed to your equipment, your grapes, the terroir, the influence of different weather conditions at different times. You learn from other wine-makers, develop your own mechanisms and again help your peers. You see how your product gets better, more predictable, year by year. But there is still that bit you cannot control. Where does this taste come from, why does it smell just like this, this very year? Certain things you may never be clear about, but this just makes it more exciting.

So here is the first part, the harvest. I should emphasize that the harvest is only the culmination of a year-long effort to get the best grapes possible. In some years, the weather may be so good that very little effort leads to great grapes; in another year you may give it all you can but still not get the desired results. If you get a couple of sustained shower at just the wrong times a year-long effort may be compromised. This, at least for most grapes, was a good year.

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Mushrooms

Its that time of the year again. If you happen to be out mushroom picking around Budapest, don’t forget to get your mushrooms verified at the  Lakossági gombavizsgálat at Fény utca piac:

http://www.fenyutcaipiac.hu/gombavizsgalat.html

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Harvest @Weingut Schneider, Balatonföldvar 2016

A good year, a good harvest.

With a relatively dry summer and a nice and warm early September, this year’s harvest was bound to be a good one. Most grapes were fully ripe. Little botrytis and around 80 oechsel of sugar for the Zöld Veltlini are a good basis for a smooth fermentation and excellent wine.

I am looking forward to my first glass of 2016 Schneider-bor.

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The dog shelter

Bistrita Romania

When you drive through practically any part of Romania you notice the large amount of stray dogs in nearly every village. Dogs are not treated as pets but rather seen as commodities that either fulfil a certain purpose or not. Once they do not fulfil that purpose anymore, they are either set free or put down.

The idea that an animal has rights is largely unknown in Romania. Some years ago activists started to tackle the situation and set up a dog shelter in the Transylvanian town of Bistrita. The local reaction has been mostly apathetic, at times hostile. Many people simply do not understand why any resources should be devoted to dogs when other problems seem to be more pressing. As a result, the shelter cannot rely on much community support beyond its own volunteers.

The main share of funding comes from the German NGOs “Wir für Strassentiere” and “Ein Herz für Streuner”. The NGOs aim to take in dogs of any age and to provide them with food and medical treatment. Most dogs find a new home in Germany, some stay on. Many dogs are in a poor state. Traumatised and scared, they often need extensive care and training until they can find a new home. Several volunteers in Bistrita spend most of their free time to provide that training and to ensure that all dogs are fed and taken care of.

It remains to be seen whether the dog shelter and similar projects will find increased acceptance. In the meantime, a handful of young volunteers continue their efforts to provide a better life to at least some dogs in Romania.

If you are interested in supporting the project or if you may even be looking for a dog yourself, feel free to contact them:

http://www.wirfuerstrassentiere.de/

http://www.einherzfuerstreuner.de/

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Remembering Sziget

2013 - 2014 - 2015