Welcome to the second part of my experiences at the wine festival !
My wife was a bit sick so I ended going with my grand father alone, he is 72 years old by the way. After trying a new unsuccessful route to the festival we arrived after 90 minutes of bus.
It was raining but the Castle was full of tourists visiting and taking pictures, once we got into the festival grounds it was not deserted but very much empty. The upside from this was that you didn’t have to push your way through the crowd in order to get some wine or just to have a nice little chat with the people that were representing the wineries.
I’ve lost all my wine tasting notes (it will become much more clear later why) but some of the wines I’ve bought and will be re-tasted on a later date.
We’ve decided to finish the wine parings and went to Malatinszky first, started by trying a rosé wine which previous vintage was supposed to be excellent.
Malatinszky
This rosé is excellent as it was promised, although it’s a different vintage this one has style and a great smell and flavor. It’s also a Merlot which you don’t see that often in Hungary and the color is very nice. It also belongs to the Noblesse range which is essentially on paper the premium range although all three of Malatinszky’s ranges are excellent and of great quality.
The paring was an excellent example of what ”Decanter” meant in their post : ” Csaba Malatinszky’s veins must run with Cabernet Franc”. These two Cabernet Franc are among the best I’ve drank in my carrier. One of them belonged to the Noblesse range and the other one was Kúria, the top range.
Bock Pince
Another Cabernet Franc pair, the premium and classic one. The 2011 has grapes from a specific mountain the Fekete-hegy, while the other one was just a mix. Also note that the Cabernet Franc Selection (the wine from 2011) has 15,00% alcohol which is quite high! Another excellent pair of Cabernet Franc’s.
After Bock we’ve decided to go and say hello to Kreinbacher, in my eyes they have the style of Sauska and the wine making of Malatinszky.
Kreinbacher
There were three options to choose from ; I decided to go with the pair of Öreg Tökék Bora.
They did not have any of the promised 2008 so we got 2013 instead which I did not mind, cause it was great. The 2006 was very special and from what I remember it had the terroir from Somló and a very complex nose and taste.
We also tried the Birtok Vörös, which means the red wine of the estate; it’s a cuvée made from Pinot Noir and Syrah, a great wine so we bought some ! And we decided to try their Pezsgő, (Hungarian name for Champagne/Sparkling wine) the prestige brut. A great flavor of apples and full of bubbles.
At this point I must admit I got drunk very fast, cause it was raining and I did not want to go to the food courts… we had some at our side of the festival but those were overpriced 5-10 euros for a small sandwich is to much. So we decided to go a bit closer to the entrance and ended up stopping by the a mutual wine house (2HA, Orsolya Pince, Bukolyi, Ráspi, Somlói Abbey and a few I can’t remember). We drank some whites from Bukolyi .. as far I can remember Tramini and Muscat than we tried the 2HA which is a great winery !
At this point we got joined by a friend which is half Hungarian and Belgian, he owns a Hungarian wine shop in Belgium (link you can find here, currently only in Dutch) and we started trying Raspi and Somlói abbey wines.
Somewhere between here, getting into a taxi and going home I’ve lost my tasting notes, I’ve learned a very important thing that day.. always eat when you drink a lot of alcohol I did not drink more than usual but I always eat small snacks when I go on wine tastings.
I am very happy to have met Thomas and I am very much convinced we will do a lot of fun stuff together in the future.
There will be no day 3 because I had a small hangover, Although I went back on Saturday afternoon to finish my list.
Enjoy reading !
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