18 July 2024 / Dániel Ercsey
Of course, it is also important – meaning Hungarian winemakers and wineries are still largely indebted to us – to taste volcanic wines in context. When I hear, for example, from a renowned Hungarian producer, that they work exclusively with white varieties because only they can express the volcanic terroir, well I’d better be escorted from the room before I kindly enlighten the winemaker about where and which black grapes are grown on volcanic soil as well as the price and prestige such wines command.
Don’t worry, a detailed Hungarian list with its cavalcade of flavours and aromas, incomprehensible geology, basalt and rhyolitic tuff as well as granite and andesite is on its way, but first an overview so you can position Hungarian volcanic wines in the wider world. Yes, but why do I even want to do so? Well, because less than 1% of the world’s wine regions lie on volcanic bedrock, and the resulting wines with their unique characters are sold at a significant price premium in most places. Just consider for a moment a Somló wine aged in large wooden cask, which we open when it is, say six to seven years old! How unique and inimitable is that? That’s why!
So, for those who claim that this experience can only be achieved with white grapes, I suggest you discover the AOC Côtes d’Auverge in France and its wonderful, volcanic Gamay and Pinot Noir, the Nerello Mascalese grape variety and its fantastically elegant reds from the slopes of Etna in Sicily, Nebbiolo from the forgotten volcanoes of Piedmont, Aglianico del Vulture from southern Italy, the light reds of Chile’s Itata Valley – made mainly from Carignan and Cinsault – and, of course, some parts of California’s world-famous Napa Valley, where the label still doesn’t say it’s volcanic, but often just “mountain Cabernet”. If that’s not enough, consider the reds of Hungary’s volcanic wine regions, from Eger and the Bükk to the Mátra and the rare but existing basalt reds from Csobánc and Szent György Hill and compare them, for example, to the Zinfandels of Lake County, California– it will be a world-class experience, I guarantee it!
As for the much better communicated Hungarian volcanic white wines, they are not unique in the world, but it’s much more interesting to taste these few together, isn’t it? Garganega from Italian Soave, Greco from Vesuvius and Assyrtiko from Santorini are all wonderful examples, but there is also Verdelho from the Azores, Malvazia from the Canary Islands (often sweet), Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay from neighbouring Austrian Styria, known simply as Vulkanland, or land of volcanoes, or the vibrant white wines from the volcanic regions of Oregon and Washington State.
As for our sweet wines – we have perhaps the best sweet wine region in the world, which is also volcanic – they can be compared, for example, with Passito di Pantelleria. This is interesting, not only because they are both sweet and volcanic, but also because of the similarities in their production processes.
Well, if you’ve read this far, you may be starting to get the point. I’ve listed 14 volcanic regions from around the world with great verve, and there aren’t that many more. Whereas in our small country – if we take our own classification strictly – Tokaj, the Bükk, Eger, the Mátra, Somló, Badacsony as well as parts of the Balaton-Highlands, Balatonfüred-Csopak (in Hegyestűn and Tihany), Etyek-Buda (in the Velence Hills) and Zala (only a very small part of the Keszthely Hills) also lie on volcanic bedrock.
The question now is how, if at all, this bedrock is noticeable in the glass. Well, that is perhaps the most burning question! Because it’s not enough for the vineyards of that winemaker to lie on volcanic bedrock, as there may be up to thirty centimetres of soil above it, and then the vines won’t notice anything of it. Then, to take it some steps further, it doesn’t matter whether the region has a cool or warm climate, not does it matter how you choose the grape variety, harvest date, fermentation temperature, yeast, nutrients, sulphur dioxide or ageing method, since too much new oak is guaranteed to mask any volcanic minerality that may be present in the wine. And talking about minerality! It seems like a small thing now, but seven or eight years ago, one of the hottest topics in the wine world was whether the concept even existed, and if so, what it meant. Renowned wine writers argued that the term should no longer be used and cited the fact that the roots of the vine cannot take up any of the properties of the bedrock in dissolved form from the soil. In fact, they are right, and this has now been proven in countless ways, yet I can still recognise a Somló wine blind when it’s in my glass. How can that be? That remains to be seen, but it appears to be related to soil life, to the micro-organisms that thrive in the soil, which is affected by soil chemistry, which also depends on the type of bedrock beneath it. So we’ve come full circle, volcanicity does have a role to play. You can sit back and sip on a saline, lemon-scented Badacsonyi Kéknyelű, a Somlói Juhfark reminiscent of the smell of basalt evaporating after rain and flinty Tokaji Furmint, and you can use the term mineral to describe what you are tasting. What’s more, we can even allow ourselves a touch of pride that it is ours…
