Chronicles of the 24th Budapest wine festival day 1

Welcome to the first part of my story about of my experiences at the wine festival.

After sitting on a bus for just over 10 minutes we arrived at the top of the hill, being smart and walking a little bit saved us a lot of frustrations of sitting on an overfull bus in the middle of the traffic. We had pre-purchased tickets so all we had to do was picking up our fancy glasses and 5 day entry bands (Tiffany’s would be jealous of the design) and we could enter.

We headed to pick up some cards so we could pay around the festival without having to pull out more cash. Don’t forget to check out how to protect your card against theft or lose, I wrote the full details here.

Now we will talk wine ! We had a whole route set out but started with St. Andrea, a winery out of Eger and one of my favorites.

We had a glass of Merengő, the flagship Egri bikavér of St. Andrea.
I knew I had a Merengő from 2009 in my fridge and was eager to taste it, as this wine is not something you open for an every day meal. These are my tasting notes :
A full bodied wine with a very complex nose of spice and red fruit, elegant tannins and mysterious flavors a real elegant wine.

After this we started with something called wine pairs, there was a list of wineries that sold a pair of wines for comparing.. not to mention it was buy two glasses get one for free 🙂 An excellent way for me to get introduced to new wineries.

Chateau Cloche

Furmint dry 2009 : A very fruity smell with light hints of oak, the taste is elegant with again the oak and citrus fruits.
Szamorodni dry 2008 : The typical smell and flavor of Szamorodni, walnuts and dried plum.

Holdvögy

Eloquence édes Szamorodni 2007 : A very sweet Szamorodni with enough sugar content to make an aszú. Very elegant tastes without dominating acids. Dried fruis and apricot.

Intuition No1. édes Zéta Szamorodni 2007 : As sweet as the previous one but made with the zéta grapes, it’s very fruity and again no acids in it at all. A real delight.

Gál Szőlőbirtok és Pincészet

Kekfrankos 2011 : A nice wine with red fruits in the nose, medium bodied and very smooth. Aged in oak barrels
Kékfrankos 2014 : The wine was a bit to young, they wanted to show the difference between fermenting on stainsteel tanks and barrels, the kékfrankos 2014 was fermented in stainless steel tanks. not my personal favourite it was a bit to sour. Almost no smell or flavors.

 

Dula Pincészet 

Egri Bikavér 2006 : Won a golden medal in 2014; one of the better bikavér’s I drank, oak and red fruits in the nose and on the tongue very nice hints of cherry. A very elegant full bodied red wine.

Egri Bikavér 1999 : Yes 1999 a great opportunity to taste such an old wine, it had to be decanted we had to wait for a small 10 min to drink it. And it was worth it the wine was a great full   bodied red wine again with a very complex nose.
In the flavors you could find spices
and red fruits with elegant tannins.

Thummerer Pince

Vili Papa Cuvée 2006 : A heavy full bodied wine, very dark ruby color with a fruity and spicy nose.
Elegant tannins this wine is a true beauty.

VIli Papa cuvée 2009 : A heavy full bodied wine again, with a bit lighter ruby color and with the same fruity and spicy nose. Light tannins but also has very great potential.

I skipped a couple of wineries out of the list till here, those are either not interesting or were not that great, champagne makers or sparkling wine makers(I really don’t like champagne !) and the Italian ones which will be done later.