Chronicles of the 24th Budapest wine festival day 3

Welcome to the third and last part of my experiences at the wine festival !

As mentioned in the last post this is actually the 4th day of the festival, I did not go the Friday evening cause of a hang over and being a girl !
We decided to go at the opening hours of the festival to avoid a huge amount of people, as it was Saturday and most people are home. So we were at the castle by 11.45 and could enter already cause we had 5 day wrist bands. Some wine houses opened already while some would open about a 30 minutes later. I went back to Malatinszky first to let my wife try the awesome Merlot rosé and also bought a new bottle as my grandfather had lost the first one.

Then it was time to go on with my list, I wanted to try Szekszárd wine.. lucky for me those wineries were right next door to the left. My big interest went to Eszterbauer, I only heard from them when we bought some Fuxli sillers and I was very curious how they actually were.. cause some people told me they are great. I wanted to taste quite a bit of wines and on the background my stomach was saying ” Not again ”, so I had to decide what I would try and what not.

We started with a Kadarka, bottle 3 on the picture below. Kadarka is much more delicate grape than most other ones, there are a lot less tannins in the skin of the grape and therefor the wine is a lot lighter (some ”wanna be” wine drinkers tempt to say it’s a bad wine). What also was very interesting about this one is the fact that it only fermented in stainless steel tanks.

We also tried their Bikavér which is unfortunately not on this picture and I somehow regret not buying. After that we ended buying four bottles of them which you can see on the picture above
Tanyamacska a Kékfrankos (blaufränkisch) from 2012; Pinceátlag a cuvée made from Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Kadarka and Kékfrankos (blaufränkisch) from 2013; Sógor Kadarka which is the Kadarka mentioned and is from 2013 and to finish Öröm a Kékfrankos (blaufränkisch) rosé from 2014. Had a nice informative conversation with a nice lady and after exchanging some information for a visit to the cellar we moved on to the next one.

I was eager to try Dúzsi Tamás but unfortunately he was not open yet, so we moved on to Mészáros Pál a winery that I’ve heard mixed reviews about and wanted to make an opinion on myself. We tried their Kadarka as well and I was no impressed, the young man that was selling the wine also seemed a bit shy to talk English so we decided to move on. We ended up going to Sauska first as a sort of in between stop cause the wineries were still opening their little huts.

Sauska is elegant and stylish, I’ve been to their winery in Villány and it was like a private party.
They reflect this style even on the wine festival which I liked.

I decided in my mind what I wanted and went to ask for something that would fit in the Furmint range, the decision ended up being a Birsalmás (which is a hill in Tokaj) Furmint of 2013.
Almost hitted the sweet spot but as all Sauska wines, it is to perfect.. do not get me wrong their wines are excellent but it’s to perfect.

After this we went back to Kreinbacher cause my wife was eager to try their Peszgő (Hungarian sparkling wine) and her opinion was it’s like appletiser with alcohol meaning their was a very dominant apple flavor and smell.
Finally Dúzsi opened his little wine house and we could try a rosé wine made by what everyone calls him the ” King of Rosé”. It was actually disappointing, after trying a Merlot rosé to compare it to the Malatinszky one.. I only felt disappointment my two single questions could not be answered either so we decided to go on after a friendly thank you.

At this point we decided to turn in our cards get our remaining money back and go home.
The 24th wine festival was a success for me and I’ve met a lot of new people and learned a lot.
Next year we will definitely be back and probably be accompanied by my friend Thomas, which has a online web shop for Hungarian wines in Belgium. You should definitely check him out. Don’t forget it’s in Dutch but in the case you got questions just send him an e-mail in English or Hungarian and he will be more then happy to help you.

Thank you for reading and the next article will probably be some wine notes about the wines we drank on my birthday evening on Sunday.