Winemakers can be an eccentric lot. József Szentesi, who makes wine in the Buda-Etyek region, has got to be one of the most eccentric. He is a self-taught winemaker, who has previously owned and run a restaurant, and sold produce. His passion is re-discovering old Hungarian grape varietals, some of which are hardly found anywhere but at the research institute in Pécs where he finds them. He cultivates them in his vineyards (which are mostly near Lake Velence) and then makes wine from them by hand (with minimal technology and no machinery in sight) in his Budafok cellar, sometimes in quantities as low as five liters. He constantly experiments with old varietals and techniques. His small Budafok cellar, which belonged to his father, is stuffed with containers of all sizes holding his experimental wines, some of which are quite exceptional.
The fact that he produces wines made from unknown varietals like csóka, vörös dinka, porcsin, laska and fehér góhér is reason enough to head out to visit his cellar. But there is another reason to keep an eye on Szentesi. He also has a 2,000 square-meter cellar in Budafok (Hungary’s center for sparkling wine-making) where he has been quietly starting up an operation for making high quality méthode traditionnelle sparkling wine. With his partner—Josef Watzl, a German sparkling wine specialist—Szentesi will dramatically up the selection of Hungarian sparkling wine by the end of the year.
This year Szentesi will be producing 40,000 bottles of sparkling wine in his Budafok cellar (and more next year if the results are good). Szentesi and Watzl will not only make their own brand under the J&J label (József + Josef), but they will also make sparkling wine for 14 other small wineries, which until now didn’t have the facilities or the capital to produce their own. About a third of this year’s production will come from their own J&J brand and the rest will be labeled under other wineries’ names (which will include Zoltán Demeter, Sarolta Bárdos, Patricius, Orsolya, Hummel, Matias, Heimann, Merfelsz, Miklós Csabi, Rókusfalvy, Ottó Légli, Szent Andrea, and Kálna). They will be made from common varietals like Rhine riesling, chardonnay, and pinot noir; native varietals such as furmint, hárslevelű, and kéknyelű; and the practically unknown Hamburgi muskotály.
While Hungarians love sparkling wine (which anyone who has ever been on the street in Budapest on New Year’s Eve can see), the selection of Hungarian sparkling wine is currently mostly limited to the wines from the enormous Budafok cellars of the Törley group and the smaller ones of the Garamváry family. These companies produce a range of sparkling wines, some of which are quite high quality (as well as good value). It is less common to see sparkling wine coming from smaller or family-owned cellars (Polgár in Villány and Kreinbacher in Somló are exceptions). Making sparkling wine calls for big investments, different techniques, and even more bureaucratic rules and regulations (we are in Hungary, after all).
Szentesi doesn’t want to imitate French Champagne, he says, as Hungary’s climate will never produce the same flavors as the soil and the cool climate of Champagne can. According to him, Hungarian sparkling wines are more similar to Italian or Spanish sparklers. These new sparklers will be ready in December (although we have preliminarily tasted a few of them already). We are already counting the days until these new sparklers emerge from their rest in the underworld of Budafok.
Find a few of Szentesi’s wines (as well as wines by other wineries) at his wine shop in Budapest, Kézműves Borok Háza (Budafoki út 111-113, Budapest 1117).
–Gábor
