09 February 2022 / Dora Budavari
The Mátra wine region is the second largest wine region in Hungary, which not only includes the slopes of the Mátra, but also lowland areas, the eastern slopes of the Börzsöny, the surroundings of Vács and Veresegyház, and even one of Budapest’s districts. (It’s worth getting to know this region a little better, so we’ve also put together some suggestions for 1, 2 and 3-day tours.)
The morning light in the Mátra near Gyöngyöstarján. Attila Kiss’s family has always had vines, his father started making wine in 1997, while Attila gradually got into winemaking in 2010. Today, he runs the Kissattila Winery, which has grown from 6 to 16 hectares and from 400 hectolitres to 1,000. “I don’t want to be a big winery, 300 hectolitres, so 400,000 bottles a year is the upper limit I want to reach. It’s a transparently sized winery,” he says.
While the wines are maturing in the cellar in winter, there’s still work to be done in the vineyards – it’s pruning time. “I think it is important to restrict yields and manage the canopy for black grapes, but I’m not so strict with white grapes. I don’t think you should limit the yield to 1-2 kilos per vine if they can handle more. Even 3 kilos gives you perfectly acceptable quality and concentration. I believe that you shouldn’t only take from the vines, but also give back. Nutrient supply, method of cultivation and maintenance are important. This is the only way to achieve high yields and concentration,” he says.
For now, everything is still done in one building, by hand, from the making of the sparkling wine to the bottling, but the old cellar branch is being renovated and the barrel ageing will then be moved there.
“The climate is warming, and black grapes ripen well in the Mátra. I think this wine region is well suited to Kékfrankos, Syrah, Cabernet Sauvignon and Franc. I focus particularly on Cabernet Sauvignon, which people really love, so I need to double the volume next year. This is a widely known fruity red wine, which still has varietal character and reflects changing consumer habits.
I’m also experimenting a lot with Olaszrizling, because of which, I now age one-third of the fresh base wine on the lees in barrel and the other two-thirds also on the lees in stainless steel tank, and then blend them after 3-4 months. The result is a creamy, broad, chiselled, consistent wine,” says Attila Kiss.
The Mátra is strong in aromatic varieties, with lots of Traminer, Sárgamuskotály aka Muscat à Petits Grains, Muscat Ottonel and Irsai Olivér in the wine region. We can make a large enough volume of fresh, aromatic wine from a blend of these that could be of export interest too. A uniform product specification is planned, but that’s something for the future.”
The Hétsoros Cellar Village in Gyöngyöspata is the venue for the Volcanic Wine Festival in the summer, where not only local wineries and small cellars open their doors to visitors, but also guest winemakers from other volcanic wine regions are invited to participate. Besides the seven-level cellar village, a wine region showroom and centre is planned with seating for around 100 people and catering.
Bálint Losonci and his family moved from Budapest to Gyöngyöspata to dedicate themselves to producing wine and have been working full-time on the 6.2-hectare family estate since 2008. They have been faming organically since 2014 and are now flirting with a natural, non-intervention direction.
“This vintage will yield very fruity, full-bodied wines with high acidity, which I really like. Finally, there’s Purcsin, this year’s big news from the experimental area. There will be 100 litres this vintage, I’ve been waiting three years for this, I even did the hoeing myself, so it’s a really personal little plot and story, and I can already see that it was worth it. I think it will be released next summer. It will be a low tannin, fresh, exciting wine. I brought the cuttings from the Basilicus Estate in Tarcal in 2018, they were the pioneers in it. We started planting indigenous varieties three years ago, and besides the Purcsin, we have a few Tihanyi Kék and Kékbajor vines,” says Bálint.
Bálint is one of the founders of the Volcanic Wines Festival, which was held for the fifth time in 2021 after a one-year gap. Last year, Bálint took a back seat and this time welcomed visitors at his own place, not far from the cellar row.
The Church of Our Lady of Sorrows in Gyöngyöspata was built around 1070, with several extensions from the 12th century onwards, resulting in the church as it looks today. The real curiosity is its 16th century Jesse altar, unique in Hungary, which was created to replace the medieval winged altar. The Jesse tree is 8 metres high, with a life-size statue of Isaiah, also known as Jesse (the dynastic founder from whom the Gospel tradition says Mary and Jesus descended), in the centre, and Jesus and Mary on the branches. The altar’s tree is reinforced from behind with a metal structure.
The church in Gyöngyöspata can be visited during masses, but if you want to be sure and discover more about this rare monument and the history of the area too, you should make an appointment to meet Károly Molnár. He’s probably the person who knows the most about this church and is happy to tell you about it and show you around. However, it’s best to call and make an appointment a few days before your visit on 06 30 239 278.
We visited the Karners in Szücsi and are shown around the area called Tavaszföld by Szeder, Fanni’s dog, a Hungarian Puli. Gábor Karner has been making wine since 1999 and planted his first vineyard in 2004. He has now been joined in the winemaking by his daughter Fanni, and the two of them do most of the work in the vineyard and cellar. They work mostly with Olaszrizling and Kékfrankos as well as with Riesling. The cultivate a total of 4.5 hectares and produce natural wines. “What we mean by natural wine is that we don’t add anything to it, nor do we take anything away from it, as Zsolt Sütő puts it. It’s pure grapes, nothing else. No sulphur dioxide, no yeast, no filtration and no fining,” says Gábor.
“In ’99 in Veresegyháza, I wanted to give my own small grape harvest to my neighbour to turn into wine, and he encouraged me to do it myself instead and helped me to do so. I was shocked that I put pure grape must into a barrel and then took wine out of it, it was like being a magician with a top hat. The following year, I tried to buy 100 kilos of grapes, but I soon realised that however well I did, a lot depends on the grapes themselves, so I established my own vineyard here in Szűcsi, in the Mátra, from where I also used to buy grapes. It’s been a long road to get to natural wines, constantly reducing what I use when making wine, until in the end, for the last ten years, the only thing I was using was sulphur dioxide. While tasting with my friends Zsolt Sütő and Oszkár Maurer, I decided to stop using sulphur dioxide completely, as wines from the Mátra have such good structure that they can stand up to not having any additions. The calcareous soils give the wines acidity, the volcanic soils add minerality and yield restriction results in excellent ripening. There is no need for anything else. We work with gravity, without pumps and do everything with our own two hands. We have no stainless steel tanks, just oak barrels, vats and vessels. We believe in the miracle of nature and want to demonstrate that to the consumer,” says Gábor. 2017 was their first sulphur dioxide-free vintage. In practice, Fanni started working like this, although she had had some reservations about completely sulphur dioxide-free wines not long before. “We fell in love,” they say in unison. “Once you get used to it, you can’t do anything else, it’s very addictive,” says Fanni.
“We currently have three wines on the market and are struggling to get approval for our Szőlőkert Olaszrizling. This is still common with natural wines, as it’s a new style for the tasting panel too. We often blend vintages, as it’s easier to communicate and sell thousands of bottles of a particular wine, and vintages can complement each other perfectly. This is the case with the Szőlőkert Olaszrizling and the Otthon Kékfrankos. We just give these wines a hashtag and a number. There is now a stable consumer base for natural wine that understands and appreciates our work. We currently produce 10,000 bottles, 70% of which are exported to America, Canada and Berlin,” explains Fanni.
While on the subject of natural wine, it is perhaps natural that experimentation is part of Fanni and Gábor’s life. We were lucky enough to have the chance to taste one of their few bottles of experimental Kékfrankos pet-nat when we walked out to the Tavaszföld vineyard where the grapes came from. And not only its entrance was explosive!
