How can this happen naturally?

Single vineyard dry wines and the world’s best Aszú – in conversation with László Szilágyi. “There will always be a place for sweet wine in the world's restaurants – there’s perhaps even room for two on a wine list - and Tokaj can happily apply for one of these places, as Aszú never disappoints.” The soft-spoken owner and winemaker of Gizella Winery, Laszló Szilágyi does not only pay lip service to this: his 2019 Aszú was one of the 50 best wines at this year’s Decanter World Wine Awards. We spoke to him.

He focused on sport for a long time, but a new university course that he started led László Szilágyi, the owner of Gizella Winery, towards agriculture. After his years in Debrecen at the Budapest University of Horticulture and Food Industry, he ended up in a community that he could hardly have imagined at the time would one day form Tokaj’s new golden team. As proof of this, you need only look at this year’s Decanter World Wine Awards.

What would you tell a total stranger about yourself? Who is László Szilágyi?

I wasn't born to be a winemaker, but that's okay. I've always considered myself a problem-solver, someone who looks for the ideal path that will lead to the best possible result. We are a Debrecen family; my family came to Tokaj from Debrecen. They had a small vineyard and that’s where I later fell in love with it. As the only grandchild, I understood that what they had laid the foundations for here was a real miracle that should be worked with.

László Szilágyi named his winery Gizella after his grandmother

How did you become a winemaker?

I joined the agricultural economics course in Debrecen in 1996, which was a new course at the time: we were the second year. In 2002, I ended up enrolling on the viticulture and winemaking course at the University of Horticulture, which had only started again two years later. Although it was a correspondence course, we were a really good group: I met István Balassa, Gábor Gardi and Attila Krimin – these meeting shaped my ideas a lot.

Even though it was a correspondence course, it was a very good team: I met István Balassa, Gábor Gardi and Attila Krimin there - these meetings shaped my ideas a lot.

Why was this such a defining experience?

My peers believed deeply in quality Hungarian wine, and in the early 2000s that was still quite a big concept. Everybody came from different places: different wine regions, different sizes of businesses, with foreign experience. But there was a common theme in this whole story, that everyone signed up for the course because they wanted to gain knowledge and networking capital; to develop a vision for the future to the best of their abilities. This common point could have been different too, and since I was still malleable at the time, I could have gone off in a completely different direction. But this approach gave me a very good foundation, because I was starting from scratch. I had never made wine before. Besides the names I’ve already mentioned, I could list others who have always helped me selflessly: such advice and personal impulses can help you develop your own individual style.

Laci carefully considered the choice of plots, taking into account, for example, that there should be 1-2 days of variability between harvest dates.

Your start coincided with the first successes of the great Tokaj dry wines. How did that inspire you to move in that direction?

By the time we got started, several big names - István Szepsy and Zoltán Demeter - had already achieved success in the family winemaking model. I inherited a cellar from my grandparents where we sold wine directly to consumers, so I got a lot of personal feedback. It was clear that there was a future for dry Tokaj, but the popularity of sweet wines was gradually declining – and I’m also to blame here.

Why do you feel this way?

Because we have created a situation for ourselves in which dry wine has clearly become a driving force for the whole Tokaj wine region, and it will be very difficult to reverse this. We - Gizella - had a very good value for money sweet wine, which was then replaced by Szamorodni: even at the beginning, this was considered a very good competition and gastronomic wine - in a more concentrated quality, with a smaller number of bottles. As a result, the proportion of sweet wine has fallen and 80% of our range is now dry. I suppose the same can be said for the entire wine region.

The excellent 2019 vintage was also made into a Szamorodni: a wine with a burst of fruit!

But why is that a problem?

We can easily do well in the league where natural sweet wines are playing. It's like a tennis match. You see the other guy suffering, you wait; then you win the match in the end. We have excellent conditions for making sweet wines and they are of very high quality. And we are letting go of what we are very good at, and with dry wine we have entered a league where thousands of people are competing. Furmint is a great variety, but it may not be suitable for making high-quality dry wines in large quantities on a stable basis. Moreover, it is not the best partner in the fight against alcohol, while early harvests may result in lower quality and loss of complexity.

But then, what do you need to excel here?

It’s hard to be clever. In my own place and surroundings, all I can do is try to do things to the best of my ability. I have tried to find excellent vineyards, because the terroir determines the winemaker’s possibilities. I think I have now managed to put together a planting system that can do a lot, with lots of Hárslevelű – it was a strategic decision for me. This grape variety’s charming, attractive character is not only appealing to those in the trade, but also to consumers who just want a good glass of wine with dinner. Nowadays, more than half my base wines are Hárslevelű, which has enabled me to break away from the mainstream a little.

The role of the individual vineyard always comes to the fore with you. How do you see this now?

I continue to believe that certain single vineyards have great potential. If you can show the style of a well-defined area in wine, it is very transparent, consistent and effective form of communication - and as we can see, there is a consumer audience for it too. You can highlight terroirs that have a particular character, whether due to soil composition or microclimate, with complex flavours that cannot be replicated elsewhere. I am currently working in four vineyards: in Tarcal, Mád and Bodrogkeresztúr - four of which I think are worth emphasising in the long term. These are Barát, Szil-völgy, Bomboly and Szent Tamás, which is currently under replanting. If I think in terms of my portfolio, I put the basic wines at the bottom and the Aszú and Szamorodni above. The aim would be to make these single vineyard wines every year, but due to the vintage particularities of the vintages, now is the first time I’ve managed to release a series like this since 2017. This is a difficult task in Tokaj, because the process of botrytisation is a natural phenomenon: once botrytis appears, you can forget about dry wine, as botrytis changes the aromatics, aromas and flavours of the wine.

Which wines are included in your new series?

Three big characters: a Furmint from Bomboly, which is a real Mád wine, fiery and mineral, a really hardcore single vineyard wine, and two wines from Tarcal, which are much softer and more aromatic thanks to the loess soil. The Barát Hárslevelű offers up the tropical fruit basket character of the grape variety, while the Szil-Völgy is a Furmint-Hárslevelű blend with a slightly cooler character. We halted the fermentation in these dry wines to leave a little bit of sugar, which works very nicely with the acidity and phenolic notes; and we used a tiny bit of French oak.

Three vineyard wines from the Gizella Winery: the fourth will be from Szent Tamás, which is currently being replanted

What do you want people to think about when they taste your wines - wherever they are in the world?

I want people to associate the brand with a high-quality expectation, because that's what drives me to improve. The other is Tokaj itself; what this volcanic soil can bring to the flavours of the wines. Each year, wines from the same vineyard show similar parameters that help to identify the style of a terroir, making it easier for consumers to like the wine and seek it out later. It is therefore important to ensure that the identity of single vineyard wines is never compromised. Since if we can show the different characters of the individual vineyards in this crystal-clear structure, we are on the right track. We’ve now come back to the point where after abandoning oak altogether, we are now trying a tiny bit of oak again for our premium wines. I don't really know of any other tool that can be used to enhance wine in such a beautiful way, to add both aroma and flavour, and to make the end result a little richer. Now I expect that the restaurant scene will again appreciate these nuanced extras, and if you use these small barrels - or I could even say concrete eggs, carboys or clay pots - skilfully, you can add even more uniqueness to the wine.

Today the 5 hectare Barát vineyard belongs entirely to the Gizella Winery

The Gizella Winery’s 2019 Aszú has been named one of the best 50 wines in the world. What does it take to make a Best in Show Aszú?

At first, we made 5 and then 6 puttonyos Aszú, and in the meantime we tried to keep moving forward professionally. Increasingly, I found that if I worked with a base wine with a more substantial, Szamorodni level of flavour, I could further increase the sugar content. This is not a competition about sweetness, of course, the higher sugar is just a benefit of this process, but it also has more acidity and higher dry extract. Such a sweet wine gets a lot of extra flavour just from the fact that all the elements are made from overripe grapes. When we had already done a couple of vintages, I realised that one or two barrels of Aszú was enough for me, but I wanted to aim for the top of the category with this. I now also see that Aszú grains from loess areas can work very well, and we support this with a more mineral base wine from the Mád or Keresztúr areas. Add to that the genius of the 2019 vintage and we hope to see many more like it. Far be it from me to be presumptuous, but we have tasted a lot of these wines, and you can simply see the astonishment on people’s faces: how can you make this naturally? How can something be so rich and layered, even from a professional perspective?

Far be it from me to be presumptuous, but we have tasted a lot of these wines, and you can just see the astonishment on people's faces: how can you make this naturally? How can something be so rich, so complex, even from a professional point of view? I had the pleasure of meeting James Suckling's team at ProWein, Stuart Pigott himself. After he tasted my dry wines, I showed him both the Szamorodni and the Aszú and I knew, because I could see it on his face, that I was going to get a high score. Our 2018 Aszú thus got 98 points. A rating like that counts for a lot in the Anglo-Saxon world, which has since given me new trade contacts too. It's a serious waiting game. You can only build recognition step by step, through generations of steady work.